News Parkiet

Banking

KBC to spend billions on buyouts in Eastern Europe

Belgian financial services company KBC Group announced plans to go on a 3-billion euro buying spree in Central and Eastern Europe on Friday. The group said it would buy out minority shareholders of Warta insurance group, a publicly traded Polish company. KBC also said it is looking to buy another bank in Poland.

They also said they want to boost their stake in Poland?s banking industry to 10 or 15 percent, from single-digit position they now hold. Most industry analysts remain skeptical about these claims, because Kredyt Bank, KBC?s main banking unit in Poland, never actually bought anything despite persistent rumors about pending takeovers of other competitors.

Banking

UniCredito should sell one Polish bank, official says

UniCredito Italiano ?would to well? if they sold one of their two Polish banks, Bank BPH and Pekao SA, Cezary Mech, the head of

Banking Supervisory Commission (KNB) said Friday. The move would lessen the threat of limited competition. Mech said. Mech?s KNB is supposed to clear the merger between the two banks.

Pharmaceuticals

OPG Groep to delist Polish unit

Dutch pharmaceutical distributor OPG Groep has called a special meeting of its Polish subsidiary, Orfe SA, in a bid to delist the company. OPG Groep already owns 91 percent of Orfe, a mid-sized firm that operates over 170 drug-stores across the country.

Real estate

ING Lease buys shopping mall from NFI Octava

Publicly traded real estate firm NFI Octava said it has agreed to sell Galeria Legnicka, south-western Poland?s biggest shopping mall now under construction in Wroclaw, to ING Lease (Polska) for an estimated 91.5 million euro. The fund will retain control over Legnicka after signing a fifteen-year operating lease contract with ING Lease.