Nordea expansion plans

Scandinavian lender Nordea Bank wants to open 150 branches across Poland in the next two to three years. This will increase the number of the bank's outlets to 200. The new branches will employ around 800 people, adding to the 920 currently working in the firm. The branches are to be opened in large cities, with a populations over 200,000, and will offer a full range of  products and services for individual clients as well as the SME sector.

The bank hopes that thanks to the investment it will triple its revenues in Poland by 2011.

"The investment will cost us several tens of millions of euro," Nordea Bank's executive director for Eastern Europe, Thomas Neckmar said, but didn't want to disclose specific details. He said that Poland's economic growth and favorable prospects for the development of the banking sector were the main reasons for the investment.

"Poland has one and a half times more people than the combined markets of Northern Europe ... while the degree of intermediation is much lower than in Scandinavia," Neckmar said.

The financing will be done by Nordea Bank Polska, but Neckmar underlined that "if needed, the group will provide the financing" for the Polish subsidiary of which it owns 98 percent.

"We have asked the management board to appeal to the general shareholder's meeting to devote some of last year's profits to the investment," the president of Nordea Bank Polska, Włodzimierz Kiciński, said. Last year the Polish subsidiary posted a profit of zł.50.06 million, in comparison to zł.30.7 million in 2005.