Santander to join race for Raiffeisen's Polish arm - Reuters

Spain's largest lender Banco Santander will look into the pending sale of Austrian Raiffeisen's Polish arm, raising the number of potential bidders to five, two market sources told Reuters. "Santander is interested," said one person on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media. Another person from the banking sector confirmed the news. Santander declined to comment, while Raiffeisen was unavailable for comment. Austria's Raiffeisen Bank International has said it aims to sell Raiffeisen Polbank, Poland's 10th lender by assets, to a Polish-listed rival as an alternative to floating the unit on the Warsaw bourse. Sources told Reuters earlier that potential bidders include Poland's PKO, its local rival Alior, controlled by state insurer PZU, France's top listed lender BNP Paribas and Dutch ING. The unit may fetch €0.8 billion - €1  billion when stripped of its problematic Swiss franc-denominated mortgage portfolio.