BBVA is setting up the remaining chance of a Guarantee on betting in Turkey

BBVA has set up a € 2.25bn offer that would give the full ownership of a Turkish lender a guarantee, while the Spanish bank is expanding its interim bet on the declining economy in recent years.

The Spanish lender said on Monday he had offered to buy 50.15% of the unsecured guarantee, Turkey’s largest bank and capitalization. The value of TL25.7bn represents 34 percent of the average price of the Guaranteed shares over the past six months.

The move is the latest example of BBVA sending some of the $ 11.6bn it earned from selling its US assets to PNC this year.

“Smaller sales in the US give us the opportunity to choose, among other things, to spend more money on our major markets,” said BBVA CEO Onur Genc, ​​a Guaranteed source.

The bank also said it was also selling a share of € 3.5bn, one of the largest in Europe.

The purchase of the Guarantee comes at a price in exchange for the value of the Turkish lira, whose purchasing power in the euro has dropped to almost a quarter of what it had in November 2014, when BBVA agreed to pay € 2bn at a price of 14.89 at the Guarantee, a project completed in 2015.

“The price is very high for those who have a limited stake in BBVA,” said Carlos Torres, chairman of BBVA. “Turkey is a very important market for us and although it is relatively stable for a short time… It has great potential.”

Garanti, which has more than 21,000 employees and 1,000 branches, is said to be the most profitable bank in the country, with a return of 19.3% and a non-performing loan by 4%.

BBVA has been overseeing the Guaranteed group since 2015. It later agreed to increase its share to 49.85 percent in 2017.

Capturing the rest of the Guarantee, which BBVA expects to complete in the first quarter of next year, could boost the Spanish lender’s interest in combining all the guarantees.