Poland Focuses on Buying UniCredit Unit Before Raiffeisen‘s

The Polish government‘s drive to boost domestic ownership of banks is focused on taking over UniCredit SpA‘s unit, a minister said on Tuesday. The deal may be structured in a way that avoids triggering a mandatory bid for a majority in Bank Pekao SA, according to people familiar with the plans.

On a day when binding bids for Raiffeisen Bank International AG‘s Polish unit were due, Treasury Minister Dawid Jackiewicz told reporters that the „priority“ for the government and state-run companies is to gain control of Bank Pekao SA from UniCredit. At the center of that effort is insurer PZU SA, whose executives traveled to Milan to discuss a potential Pekao deal last month. The company is also likely to bid for the Austrian bank‘s unit, Puls Biznesu newspaper reported last week.

UniCredit and Raiffeisen are both considering the disposal of their subsidiaries to boost capital ratios, playing into the hands of the Polish government which wants more say in the economy and seeks to end what it called „the exploitation of Poles“ by mostly foreign-owned lenders. Pekao‘s 170 billion zloty ($44 billion) in assets, three times the size of Raiffeisen Bank Polska, make it the top prize in the consolidation wave, with the buyer gaining a platform for further expansion, according to Dariusz Gorski, an analyst at Bank Zachodni WBK SA.