BBVA took failed Guaranty Bank off the FDIC's hands and doubled down on Texas

On August 21, 2009, regulators closed Guaranty Bank of Austin, Texas — one of the largest US bank failures of the crisis — and named the FDIC receiver. While most banks were retrenching, Spain's BBVA bid for it through its US arm BBVA Compass.

The purchase and assumption deal transferred Guaranty's deposits and branches to BBVA Compass overnight. Guaranty had run 105 branches in Texas and 59 in California; BBVA got all 164, entering California for the first time and becoming the fourth-largest bank in Texas, with about $12 billion of assets.

The risk sat with the state, not the buyer: the FDIC agreed to bear 80% of the first $2.3 billion of losses on covered assets and 95% above that. BBVA gained scale in its core Hispanic-American markets while peers were closing branches.

164 branches including a California entry, about $12 billion of assets and 300,000 customers, with the FDIC covering 80-95% of losses on the loan book

FDIC loss-sharing capped the downside on a loan book nobody could fully diligence in 2009.

Guaranty's footprint overlapped BBVA Compass's Texas base, so integration costs were low and the California entry was free.

BBVA entered the crisis with relatively little US subprime exposure, so it had capital when domestic rivals had none.

Buying from a receiver meant no premium, no board fight and no financing market — just a winning bid.

A receiver is the most motivated seller in a crisis: loss-sharing can turn a competitor's failure into nearly risk-free scale.

The branches reopened as BBVA Compass the next business day, and the deal anchored BBVA's US franchise for a decade. In 2020-21 BBVA sold the entire US business to PNC for $11.6 billion — the Guaranty expansion having multiplied the value of the platform it built from crisis-era buys.