Spanish banking group BBVA appointed Luisa Gómez Bravo as its Group Chief Financial Officer, effective 1 January 2025, in a leadership transition that brings a seasoned investment banker to the finance function at one of Europe's largest financial institutions. Gómez Bravo moves into the CFO role from her previous position as Global Head of Corporate and Investment Banking at BBVA, where she oversaw the group's wholesale banking activities across its international footprint.
She succeeds Rafael Salinas Martínez, who concluded a career spanning more than three decades at BBVA. Salinas's tenure as CFO covered a period of significant strategic and financial evolution for the group, including the management of capital ratios through successive interest rate cycles and the pursuit of BBVA's acquisition ambitions in key markets. His departure marks the end of a long chapter for the group's finance leadership.
FROM INVESTMENT BANKING TO THE FINANCE CHAIR
Gómez Bravo's move from Global Head of CIB to Group CFO is a notable transition, bringing to the finance function a leader steeped in deal execution, capital markets and client-facing wholesale banking. Her experience in structuring complex transactions and managing large institutional relationships equips her with a perspective on risk and capital allocation that is increasingly valued in chief financial officers of major banks.
At the CIB level, Gómez Bravo was responsible for BBVA's corporate finance, debt capital markets and advisory activities across Europe, the Americas, Mexico and other markets in which the group operates. The breadth of that remit — spanning both developed and emerging market operations — mirrors the geographic diversity that defines BBVA's balance sheet and which the CFO must manage from a capital and funding perspective.
Her appointment also reflects a broader pattern across European banking, where CFO roles are increasingly being filled by executives with broad business-line experience rather than exclusively from finance or treasury backgrounds. The demands of modern bank CFO mandates — encompassing investor relations, regulatory capital management, mergers and acquisitions financing and strategic planning — reward executives who have operated across multiple disciplines.
TRANSITION AMID STRATEGIC ACTIVITY
BBVA enters 2025 as one of Europe's most active banking groups in terms of strategic positioning, with its international model — combining significant operations in Spain, Mexico, Turkey, South America and the United States — requiring close financial oversight across varied regulatory and macroeconomic environments. The CFO function plays a central role in co-ordinating capital allocation across these geographies and communicating financial performance to investors.
Gómez Bravo's background in client-facing and revenue-generating roles may also inform how she approaches investor engagement, bringing a commercial dimension to the CFO's external communications responsibilities. BBVA has a large and internationally diverse institutional shareholder base, and the CFO's role in articulating the group's financial strategy to the market is substantial.
Salinas's departure after more than 30 years caps a career that spanned numerous cycles in Spanish and global banking. BBVA said the leadership changes were part of an ongoing organisational evolution designed to position the group for its strategic priorities in the years ahead. Gómez Bravo's elevation is widely seen as recognition of a career built at the heart of BBVA's growth businesses.