The bank is gaining ground in corporate and structured finance after participating in eight major deals in 2025. Along with Santander, it is the only Spanish institution in the North American country.
CaixaBank has turned Canada into one of the cornerstones of its international growth strategy. The bank was the first Spanish institution to set foot in the country, opening a representative office in Toronto’s financial district in late 2018, and over the past year it has ramped up its activity to record its best performance since its arrival.
The bank participated in corporate and structured financing deals worth CAD 960 million (approximately €600 million) in 2025 — a 140% increase over the previous year, according to the institution’s data. In a single year, CaixaBank deployed nearly a quarter of the CAD 4 billion it has accumulated since entering the country, where it shares a presence only with Santander. The latter obtained its banking license last year, though its activity is more focused on consumer lending.
Growth
CaixaBank’s Canadian business was one of the drivers behind the 21% growth the bank recorded last year in the volume financed through its international branches — an area on which the institution has placed strategic emphasis outside of Spain and which is set to represent an ever-greater share of its investment banking activity.
The group intends to strengthen its international push with more professionals — currently numbering 245 — and by broadening its target client base beyond Spanish companies with international operations to include all major global corporations.
CaixaBank has its sights set on the multi-billion-dollar energy and infrastructure projects being developed worldwide, and Canada is a country where several such initiatives are concentrated. The bank managed to join eight of them in 2025.
One of the largest was the construction of a 6.3-kilometre tunnel extension of Toronto’s Line 1 subway toward Richmond Hill. CaixaBank played a prominent role in the financing syndicate, contributing CAD 108 million out of a total CAD 569 million.
Hospitals
An even larger check was written for Canada’s biggest hospital complex, the Trillium Health Partners M-Site Hospital in Ontario, developed by EllisDon and PCL. The bank’s financing reached CAD 120 million, with the aim of building a presence in socially impactful healthcare infrastructure.
On the green energy front, CaixaBank financed the Oneida Project, a 250-megawatt battery energy storage system (BESS) in Ontario led by Northland Power.
This marks a further step in CaixaBank’s alliance with the Canadian energy company, which in 2022 chose the bank as its primary institution in Spain following its arrival in the country the year before. Now the relationship is deepening as Northland brings CaixaBank business in its home market.
This is the result of a strategy implemented by the bank’s investment banking division, which in recent years has competed not only to serve major companies arriving in Spain, but also to become the go-to partner for the deals those companies carry out in other countries and in their home markets.
It is a measured approach that CaixaBank executives say carries controlled risk, generating revenue without compromising solvency or non-performing loan ratios — particularly because the bank targets high-credit-rated names and the most structurally complex transactions, which are precisely the ones clients pay a premium for.
