Alior Bank to invest EUR 400 million and rival Polbank

The bank will focus on individuals and SMEs, which resembles the strategy of Polbank to some extent. After two years, the Greek institution has 300,000 clients, while the value of deposits exceeded zł.2.5 billion last year, and the loans portfolio stood at zł.5.9 billion and losses amounted to almost zł.100 million. In terms of assets of zł.7.8 billion, the bank is ranked 21, but its portfolio of loans is almost equal to AIG Bank, BOŚ and Deutsche Bank PBC which have been operating much longer on the market. Polbank's sales network is comprised of 146 own outlets, 115 partner outlets, eight mortgage centers and six outlets for SMEs. Alior will launch with 80 branches, while within three years it intends to control 2-4% of the market with 1 million clients, which is almost three times the amount currently held by Polbank. In 2008 Polbank  will open 100 outlets, but by 2012 it should enter the top five as, "This is our objective. We condition further expansion on this," said Kazimierz Stańczak, director of Polbank EFG. Alior should immediately enter the top ten on the market and apart from pure banking services it will offer its own brokerage services. (Rzeczpospolita, p. B7)