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THE RETURN OF JAY SIDHU

SARAH BLOOM RASKIN: Q&A

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GAME ON

BBVA Compass’ prominent NBA sponsorship, game-changing core platform upgrade and high-tech new headquarters tower–deep within the heart of its Texas base of U.S. banking operations–have opened a new playbook for the Spanish-owned franchise. Its futuristic banking model is attracting the spotlight and giving it the means to grow both in and out of its branch footprint. BY

GLEN FEST

Francisco González is BBVA’s global chairman and CEO.

“When you look across the houston skyline,” says Francisco González, chairman and CEO of BBVA Group, “there’s not one building that defines it.” True enough. In the biggest city in Texas, there is no Space Needle, no Empire State Building, no Gateway Arch, no Sears (or make that Willis) Tower. Houston has Heritage Plaza, the JPMorgan Chase Tower and the Wells Fargo Bank Plaza, but nothing on the iconic scale of the postmodern Cuatro Torres (Four Towers) in BBVA’s corporate home of Madrid, or even Dallas’ Reunion Tower, capped by a bulging-ball design. No, in Houston, the city’s primary architectural achievement, the Astrodome, sits vacant and neglected, and the former Enron Tower now goes by the less-than-catchy name of “1400 Smith Street.” González offers his observation not to puncture the civic pride of the city adopted as BBVA’s U.S.

headquarters, but to underscore the vibrancy and potential of what both he and BBVA USA manager Manuel “Manolo” Sánchez see as a perpetually growing city, one that perhaps would give any skyline feature trouble emerging from the bustle. And now BBVA has made its own contribution to the urban landscape, a sleek, 22-story headquarters representing close...