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Weekly Lists
December 15, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 23
bne:Banker BZ WBK agrees to
buy Deutsche Bank’s Polish operations for PLN1.3bn
Poland’s third largest bank BZ WBK has signed a deal to purchase a part of Deutsche Bank’s Polish business for PLN1.3bn (€310mn).
BZ WBK, a Polish unit of Spain’s Santander, will take over Deutsche Bank’s retail business, alongside private banking, small and me- dium enterprises business, as well as brokerage. The deal does not cover Deutsche Bank’s foreign currency credit portfolio and its corporate and investment banking unit.
Following the transaction, BZ WBK will be strengthened as the third largest Polish bank by assets, at PLN169bn.
BZ WBK will pay 20% of the transaction’s value in cash, while the remaining 80% will be paid for with an issue of 2.75mn of new shares to Deutsche Bank.
The deal has been talked about for some time and comes in as
a part of consolidation in the Polish banking sector underway for some time. In a previous major deal, Poland’s state-controlled insurer PZU took control over Bank Pekao, the Polish business of Italy’s UniCredit group.
The European Investment Bank (EIB) decided on December 12 to delay its decision on a €1.5bn loan for the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP).
The pipeline, currently under construction, is a key part of the Southern Gas Corridor. It is intended to connect to infrastructure carrying gas from Azerbaijan’s giant offshore Shah Deniz II field to the Turkish-Greek border and on across Greece, Albania and the Adriatic Sea to southern Italy.
The EIB’s decision came after pressure from a growing number of civil society groups.
“In the last few days over 4,000 people across Europe and beyond told the bank’s board members that supporting TAP with a massive public loan would be inconsistent with the EIB’s attendance at the One Planet Summit in Paris where the bank pledged, once again, to align its finance with the Paris climate Agreement,” the emailed statement from Counter Balance, CEE Bankwatch Network, Friends of the Earth France and 360.org said.
However, a spokesperson for the bank said the timing was coinci- dental, and the delay in making a decision was not related to the One Planet Summit.
EIB postpones decision on TAP loan