KPWiG sets up road block in Polish superbank merger

There is little chance that the situation will change over the next few days unless the Italian UniCredito agrees to move its Vienna center for businesses in Central-Eastern Europe to Warsaw. Alessnadro Profumo, president of UniCredito's management board, also failed to receive the Commission's permission to merge BPH with another Polish bank, Pekao. The planned changes on the Polish market were supposed to for a key element of the latest merger of Unicredito, which is the second largest Italian bank and controls Pekao, with the second largest German bank, HypoVereinsbank. KPWiG's spokesperson Łukasz Dajnowicz stated that Unicredito had failed to submit a number of required documents. "We also do not conceal the fact that the interests of the Polish economy are essential to us," he said. According to Parkiet, this Polish interest concerns the attempt to block the planned staff reduction in the bank (about 2,500 people would lose their job), as well as convincing the Italians to move the center controlling the future of the merged UCI and HVB banks to Poland. (Parkiet, p. 1) A.F.