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6 I Companies & Markets bne July 2021
crisis more than a decade ago. With the pandemic, however, NPL ratios deteriorated in the autumn 2020 wave, though as the report said, the impact was smaller than anticipated. The report’s authors forecast that the current negative trend will continue over the next six months.
“The COVID-19 crisis has brought about a significant change to the asset quality in portfolios. The fall in NPLs recorded until early 2020 came to an end,” said the report.
“Banks' expectation[s] both in spring 2020 and in autumn 2020 were more negative regarding NPL developments compared to what the very same banks actually recorded over the same period ex-post. This suggests that the policy and banks’ strategic responses may have played a mitigating role.” NPL ratios are expected to deteriorate further across the board over the next six months.
Of the bank subsidiaries surveyed, around 43% said their NPL ratios had risen, while 32% said they had continued to decrease over the past six months. 65% of banks expect an increase in NPL ratios over the next six months, while just 10% anticipate a decrease.
Poland's PKN Orlen bulks up to play
in the big league
Wojciech Kosc in Warsaw
Oil and gas giant PKN Orlen, already Poland’s biggest company by revenues, is being built up by the country’s radical rightwing government to be a national champion fit to play in the same league as Austria’s OMV
and Spain’s Repsol.
At the same time, Orlen will have to play a major role in the country’s belated and protracted drive to meet the European Union’s goal to be carbon-neutral by 2050.
“We are creating an integrated and diversified fuel and energy company based on the strengths of each [participating] company that will be capable of facing the challenges of energy transformation and international competition,”
PKN Orlen’s CEO Daniel Obajtek has said.
Typically for an integrated oil and gas company, PKN Orlen does pretty much everything along the hydrocarbons’ value
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Banks reported a "significant positive role” from regulatory and policy measures to support lending. It cites banks that took advantage of public guarantee schemes as saying that these were “very effective” in supporting loan extensions. Meanwhile, a smaller number of banks took advantage of central bank long-term refinancing operations, which most said were supportive to credit conditions. Commenting on which measures were most effective in supporting lending to the economy, banks singled out flexibility on NPL treatment and capital relief measures such as the release of regulatory buffers.
As the study notes, many countries and banks in the region have adopted moratoria measures for loans. According to the report, this covers between 0% and 20% of the total outstanding loan portfolio for around 70% of the banks surveyed, and between 20% and up to 60-70% for the remainder.
Another impact of the pandemic has been to spur on digitalisation. According to the study, banks have continued to speed up their propensity to digitalise, in particular in client outreach and risk management.
chain: from exploration and production to refining and retailing fuels and other oil-based products. PKN Orlen’s revenue in 2020 came in at PLN86.2bn (€19.33bn) – down 22.3% versus 2019, its net profit PLN3.4bn,
a reduction of 20.9%.
The Warsaw-listed refiner is 27.52% controlled by the Polish Treasury, which gives the Polish state control over the company – with all side effects that come with it and which have become glaring since the rightwing coalition government, led by the Law and Justice (PiS) party took over power in 2015.
The PiS-led government has handpicked the company to
be the core around which other state companies are being integrated. The end goal is the creation of a state-controlled energy giant, which Orlen will lead after taking over Poland’s other, smaller, refiner, Lotos, and oil and gas exploration