At Least 7 Bids Placed For AIB's Poland BZ WBK Stake -Sources

1st Jul 2010 15:22

By Malgorzata Halaba Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES WARSAW (Dow Jones)--At least seven companies are bidding for Allied Irish Bank PLC's (AIB) 70.5% stake in Poland's Bank Zachodni WBK SA (BZW.WA), people familiar with the situation said Thursday. The bidders include Poland's two largest lenders--state-controlled PKO Bank Polski (PKO.WA) and Bank Pekao SA (PEO.WA), a unit of Unicredit SpA (UCG.MI)--have placed bids, the people said. Russia's Sberbank (SBRBF), HSBC PLC (HBC), Italy's Intesa Sanpaolo SpA (ISP.MI), France's BNP Paribas SA (BNP.FR) and U.S.-based private equity company Apax Partners have also placed bids, the people added. AIB has to sell its stake in the Polish lender to meet capital targets, after the Irish bank received EUR3.5 billion in government aid to help offset its bad debts. Both Polish banks refused to comment on the issue, but their chief executives, Zbigniew Jagiello of PKO BP and Alicja Kornasiewicz of Pekao, have previously said the acquisition of BZ WBK is too great an opportunity to be missed. Sberbank didn't have immediate comment on the issue. However, in June the bank's deputy chief executive Andrey Donskikh told RIA Novosti "the bank will consider buying Poland's fourth-largest bank by assets, BZ WBK." Intesa Sanpaolo refused to comment on the issue. Poland's government, which holds a 40.99% stake in PKO BP, the country's largest bank by assets, considers the stake sale as an opportunity to reduce foreign ownership of Poland's banking sector and it encouraged PKO BP to submit the offer. Morgan Stanley (MS) has been hired to run the sale, which is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2010 or the first quarter of 2011. -By Malgorzata Halaba, Dow Jones Newswires; +48 22 447-2430; [email protected] (Sabrina Cohen in Milan and William Mauldin in Moscow contributed to this article.) (END) Dow Jones Newswires July 01, 2010 10:22 ET (14:22 GMT)