The future direction of Bank Pocztowy to be decided today

Today, the management of Polish Post (PP) is to decide whether the company will outpace PKO BP in buying shares of PP's subsidiary Bank Pocztowy (BP) from Prokom Investments. PP has a preferential right to acquire 243,227, that is 25% of BP's shares, and so far there have been no signals that PP is going to withdraw from this option. "The management of Polish Post will deal with this issue on Monday, and only then it will become clear if PP is going to make use of its buying preference," said PP's spokesman Marcin Anaszewicz. It has yet to be revealed how much PKO BP would be able to pay for BP's shares. Three years ago Austrian Raiffaisen Zentralbank was ready to offer zł.400 million for a similar block of shares, but their offer was declined as too low. Should PKO BP acquire BP's stock, such a strong partner would help the bank, however BP fears they would become only another chain of PKO BP's branches selling mostly their products. (Puls Biznesu, p. 6) D.W.