BBVA México Brand Guidelines: Banco de Comercio 1932, Bancomer and a 2019 Rename

A 1932 Mexico City bank that grew into a network.

BBVA México began as Banco de Comercio, founded in Mexico City on 15 October 1932, according to Spanish Wikipedia, which names its founders as Raúl Baillères, Salvador Ugarte, Mario Domínguez and Ernesto J. Amezcua, a group of businessmen it calls Grupo BUDA. English Wikipedia adds Liberto Senderos to the list and says Ugarte held about two-thirds of the shares. The bank opened its first headquarters building in Mexico City in 1936 and, before the end of that decade, had correspondents in Chicago and New York, the Spanish article says.

Growth came through a network rather than a single bank. Over the following quarter of a century, thirty-four regional banks were set up across the country to form the Sistema de Bancos de Comercio, Spanish Wikipedia says. In 1977 those affiliated banks and several non-bank subsidiaries merged into one multiple-service bank under the acronym Bancomer, the name the institution would carry, in one form or another, for more than four decades.

Like every private bank in Mexico, Bancomer was nationalised on 1 September 1982. It returned to private hands in December 1991, when, according to Spanish Wikipedia, a group linked to the Monterrey holding companies Valores Monterrey and Valores Industriales bought a majority of the shares; English Wikipedia describes the buyers as a group of investors led by Eugenio Garza Lagüera.

From BBV Bancomer to one global name.

The Spanish connection began in 2000. In July that year Banco Bilbao Vizcaya, not yet merged with Argentaria, combined its Mexican group, BBV-Probursa, with Bancomer to form Grupo BBV Bancomer, and in August the group bought Banca Promex, Spanish Wikipedia says. The same article records that the Mexican group became a subsidiary of Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria in June 2002, when the Spanish bank passed half of the shares; English Wikipedia says BBVA bought the remaining public shares in February 2004 to take complete ownership. For close to two decades the bank traded as BBVA Bancomer.

The name then changed with the parent’s identity. On 24 April 2019 BBVA told its staff that it would use one brand in every market, dropping the local names Francés in Argentina, Compass in the United States, Bancomer in Mexico and Continental in Peru, and launching a new logo; the group described the new identity as more optimistic and empathetic and said it would roll out across its buildings, branch network and corporate materials. On 10 June 2019, Spanish Wikipedia says, BBVA Bancomer became BBVA México; the headquarters became Torre BBVA, the football league Liga BBVA MX and the Monterrey stadium Estadio BBVA. The article adds that the Bancomer name was dropped altogether in 2020 and that the bank announced a change to its corporate name in September 2021. The parent’s own history is told in our BBVA guide.

The bank’s most visible building is its headquarters on Paseo de la Reforma. Designed by the Mexican practice LEGORRETA with the British architect Richard Rogers, Torre BBVA México is 235 metres tall, has 50 floors and houses more than 5,000 employees, El Economista reported in October 2026, when the tower was included in LEGORRETA Mexican Architecture, a Rizzoli New York book covering about thirty of the firm’s projects. The paper says the building holds LEED Platinum certification. Spanish Wikipedia records that the tower was inaugurated in February 2016 and that the bank opened an innovation centre in March of that year.

How Latin American banks present themselves.

Latin American banks tend to present themselves through bold wordmarks and a small set of strong colours. Blues, reds, greens and yellows recur across the region’s banking brands, usually paired with a short name or acronym that has to work on a branch front, a debit card and an app icon alike. Many names are Spanish and carry a place, a nation or a founding purpose in them, and slogans are written for a home audience first.

Photography does much of the work. Bank websites and reports in the region often show branches, city streets and customers rather than abstract imagery, and some banks make a landmark headquarters building part of their public face. Financial-inclusion programmes — accounts for people new to banking, credit for small businesses, scholarships — are a recurring theme, presented alongside the core pages on accounts, cards, loans, remittances and mobile apps.

Sponsorship is another constant. Football leagues, stadiums and clubs carry bank names in several countries, and banks also run cultural foundations, art collections and exhibitions that put the brand in a setting far from the branch counter.

The paper trail matters too. Listed banks and the subsidiaries of international groups publish annual reports and sustainability reports, and these, together with dated press coverage and public histories, are what this guide draws on. Each entry sets out who founded the bank, who owns it now and how its name has changed, and marks what rests only on the bank’s own word. The colours and typefaces shown here are unofficial interpretations, not the banks’ own specifications.

A Spanish-owned bank with Mexican landmarks.

BBVA México operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Spanish group, English Wikipedia says. At the end of 2025 it was the largest financial group in the country, with 1,635 branches across Mexico’s 32 states, according to Spanish Wikipedia, and El Economista described it in October 2026 as the largest of the banks operating in Mexico.

Its leadership changed in 2026. In July the bank announced that Eduardo Osuna, director general since 2015, would be proposed as chairman of the board and that José Luis Elechiguerra had been named country manager and would be proposed as director general, El Economista reported. At his first press conference in that role, in October 2026, Elechiguerra said the bank aimed to lead the era of artificial intelligence as it had led the move to digital banking, the paper reported.

Outside the branches, the bank’s foundation, Fundación BBVA México, runs a scholarship programme called Becas BBVA para Chavos que Inspiran, which the foundation says helps thousands of young people continue their studies. The bank’s name has also been attached to Mexican football for years: Spanish Wikipedia records the Liga Bancomer MX sponsorship agreed in 2013 and the 2019 renaming of the league and of the Monterrey stadium after the new brand.

For a design guide, BBVA México shows how a Mexican bank founded in 1932 took on its Spanish parent’s single name and logo in 2019 and carried them onto a skyscraper, a football league and a stadium. Compare BBVA, the Spanish parent, and Banamex, the Mexico City bank formed in 1884. For this guide we use a deep navy, a soft sky blue and a clear aqua with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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