Ministers come out against BPH-Pekao merger deal

Ministers would like to sell the bank to another investor. This means that Monday's visit of Alessandro Profumo, president of UniCredito, who was in Poland to meet with the Bank Supervisory Commission (KNB) ended with no binding results. According to Parkiet sources, the Italian company promised that the Polish branches of banks would be free of control from BACA, which owns BPH. In their opinion this would constitute a launch pad to the East and the creation of their 'own' holding. UniCredito would also be willing to agree for far fewer redundancies than initially planned, but the problem is that nobody wishes to talk with the Italian company. According to the sources, another disappointment is the fact that nobody is reacting to the negative PR surrounding Poland - the only country in Europe which is blocking the merger. "Recently collected material indicates that the supervisory watchdog is collecting reasons to block the merger," say the sources. (Parkiet, p. 1) M.M.