Warsaw (Puls Biznesu) – The agreement signed between the Ministry of the Treasure and Unicredit provides for splitting the outlets of Bank BPH. Part of them is to be sold to an investor, the rest will be acquired by Pekao.
The government signed agreement with the Italians concerning Pekao and Bank BPH. The latter is supposed to stay an independent bank. Unicredit agreed to sell 200 of its outlets and their banking services to an independent, third party. The rest of the assets will be acquired by Pekao. Unicredit pledged not to fire employees in Pekao or Bank BPH till the end of March 2008.
“The agreement is advantageous to Pekao which will soon become Poland’s biggest bank, to BPH whose brand will be preserved as well as to the Treasury which protected the employees, took care for the privatization agreements and competition issues”, Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz commented.
The parties do not reveal details.
“We must prepare the details. But the transaction will be fully transparent”, Alessandro Profumo, Unicredit CEO said.
Analysts agree that Pekao will not be disadvantaged.
“The bank will acquire 280 out of 480 outlets of Bank BPH, which will substantially increase its market share. In addition, it probably won’t have to merge the activities which are not interesting for itself. The operation may be much cheaper and easier than merging the whole Bank BPH with the headquarters. The bank will not need agreement for the merger because Pekao is acquiring only part of the rival”, Dariusz Gorski, DB Securities analyst commented.
In his opinion, Unicredit will easily find companies interested in part of Bank BPH.
“Unicredit may count on big demand”, Dariusz Gorski added.
“If the government wants big competition of the Polish banking market, the banks already active in Poland should not be taken into account. Out of Polish entities, PZU insurer is the only possibility”, Andrzej Powierza, BDM PKO BP analyst added.
Out of foreign banks, Dariusz Olszewski, TDI CEO enumerated the following possible acquirers: Nordea, SEB and all foreign financial institutions with sales department or limited operations as well as British banks.
Analysts stress that the agreement does not explain whether clients will be sold with the outlets, which would be difficult because Bank BPH has centralized IT system with clients not being allocated to outlets. There are no details of how the division of Bank BPH is to be executed.