Company: BBVXF
Filing Date: 2025-02-27
Form Type: F-4/A
Source: 0001193125-25-037317
Chunk: 644

Company: BANCO BILBAO VIZCAYA ARGENTARIA, S.A.
Filing Date: 2025-02-27
Form: F-4/A
Chunk 644
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 previously. Lastly, on 27 December, a 450 million euro direct aid scheme was established for the enterprises hit the hardest by the increase of gas prices, such as those involved in the ceramic industry. A-518

Impacts of interest rate hikes and rising inflation

On 22 November
2022, through an agreement of the Council of Ministers, the government introduced a package of measures designed to ease the mortgage burden. The package acts in three ways. Firstly, it amends the 2012 Code of Good Practice, reinforcing the relief
measures available to vulnerable households by reducing the applicable interest rate during the five-year grace period (to Euribor minus 0.10% from the current Euribor plus 0.25%), by introducing the option to apply for debt restructuring for a
second time and by extending the period during which they can request that their home be surrendered in settlement of the outstanding debt to two years. The scope of application of the aforesaid Code of Good Practice was also extended, so that any
households whose effort rate has increased by less than 50% may benefit from a two-year grace period, from a more favourable interest rate during this period and from a term extension on their loans of up to
seven years. Secondly, it created a new temporary Code of Good Practice (valid for two years), which will ease the financial burden of mortgages taken out by middle-class families up to 31 December 2022, by freezing repayment instalment amounts
and extending the repayment period of the loan to seven years. Thirdly, expenses and fees will be reduced to make it easier to change from a floating rate to a fixed rate and the fees charged for early repayments and for changing from a
floating-rate mortgage to a fixed-rate mortgage will be scrapped for the whole of 2023. Uptake of the two Codes of Good Practice by financial institutions is voluntary, although once they become signatories, compliance therewith is mandatory.

Banco Sabadell became a signatory of the new Code of Good Practice on 16 December 2022.

Impacts arising from Covid-19

The public health emergency caused by Covid-19 in March 2020 continued until early 2022 and was gradually
overcome in the first half of the year in the main markets in which the Group operates. 2022 saw the application of the support measures approved by governments in 2020 and 2021 to provide the support needed by viable businesses, particularly in the