Regain banking assets - new Polish finance minister supports privatisation in Poland. Corruption?

Finally what appears to be a sensible appointment by PM Kopacz. The PO has been following in the footsteps of the "sell off everything in sight" philosophy of Balcerowicz, greedily eyeing the privatization revenues that will enrich government coffers. The new finance minister Andrzej Czerwiński supports the plans to buy back some of Poland's banks by PZU, eastern Europe's biggest insurer.

The plans are to create a major home-grown bank that can challenge the local businesses of major foreign lenders such as CitiHandlowy, ING , Santander and UniCredit.

The reason Jews are so powerful and influential is that they own the banks in many parts of the world. Not many Poles know that the US has no true central bank. The Federal Reserve is a consortium of nine private, Jewish-linked banks. They must be doing something right since the US constitutes to be the world's biggest economy.

It does not matter much who gets appointed now since PO is on their way out. We are almost at end of June, in August, government + parliament on vacation and in September campaign for Parliamentary élections so in conclusion, the current government shall have no time to do whatesover.

Codswallop.

Obsession, rather.


Buy back? Most of these banks were never owned locally in the first place. Alior is owned by a Italian-French company, and was never in Polish hands to begin with.

Can anybody remember which the biggest bank in Central & Eastern Europe is? Which country is it from and who controls it?


And a very sad one too.

Precisely, not that it matters in the slightest who the owners of a bank are -most should be traded publicly anyway, allowing anyone who can afford it to buy shares.

It already exists, its name is PKO BP


Yes, but the owner is a French billionaire of Polish origin, Romain Zaleski.

Isn't it Pekao SA, owned by Italy's UniCredito?

I am not sure I understand your point. Both Pekao SA and PKO BP exist. Pekao SA is indeed owned by Unicredito, but PKO BP is owned by the Polish Government, so already fulfills your wishes of a "major home grown bank"

It's tiny. PKO BP is far, far bigger.

PKO BP bought Nordea recently, didn't they? I seem to remember that they've got quite a bit of cash put away for future acquisitions too.

Not exactly, the Polish state (not the government) owns about 41%, with another ten percent owned by a state-owned bank.


Yes, but they want to spend that money, because they fear the government might take it from them and spend the money on what Poland needs. The reason PZU is looking at buying a chunk of Alior is much the same.

They have vast amounts on deposit.

That is a bit exaggerated.. While PKO BP is Poland's largest bank by assets (256 bn PLN), Pekao SA isn't exactly "tiny".. With total assets of 163 bn PLN, it ranks in the top 3..

It's the largest bank in Central & Eastern Europe, and owned by Poland. Makes you wonder why some people talk about "plans to create a major home-grown bank that can challenge the local businesses of major foreign lenders such as CitiHandlowy, ING , Santander and UniCredit".

Communist background; apparently it makes people unable to comprehend economics, or do maths.

Yes that is codswallop, Polonius
archive.adl.org/special_reports/control_of_fed/print.html

Everything for show.as usual.playing patriotic now.they smelled some votes to be won.no longer that month ago,those cnuts tried to sell Poland's forests.no

w all patriotic.nobody is buying this **** no longer.just leave crooks

quote edited
What then is your reason why Jews are so powerful and influential? Remember there's only about 15 mln of them world-wide! That would be good to know so Poles could try to be more like them.

Also, the head of the Fed has always been a member of the "chosen people". Now it's a bloke named Bernanke or something like that.

Surely if they were so powerful Polonius there wouldnt be so much dodgy media lying about them, and probably millions of em wouldnt have died in WW2. If there's any 'secret' its probably the same one as to why so many Asians in the UK do well.

Almost all migrant groups push their kids to do well, are self-reliant and network. Banking is a lucrative field to be in. End of.

Except that most of the banks discussed in this thread are publicly tradable - anyone with a couple of spare quid can buy into them and the shareholders appoint the board. Certainly no reason for the state to get involved in operating banks, though nothing wrong with them holding some shares as a sound investment.

The original post in this thread is nonsense. The text even conflicts with the title.

How is state-owned enterprises buying up private companies supporting privatisation? The state buying private companies is usually referred to as nationalisation.


Why create something that already exists?

Merged: Privatisation process in 2012-2014 - mismanagement / corruption in Poland

NIK (Polish Supreme Audit Office) has reported that in 2012-2014 shares of four state controlled companies were sold below their real value.

The Supreme Chamber of Control of the Ministry of the Treasury in Poland pointed out irregularities in the privatization of four companies. NIK auditors concluded that the shares sold at a price lower than their actual value.

bankier.pl/wiadomosc/NIK-nieprawidlowosci-przy-prywatyzacji-Ciechu-7289594.html

Imbeciles or thieves? BTW 1 of these 4 companies is Ciech SA. Wasn't there an expat threatening me with a lawsuit when I was saying the same thing several months ago :))))) ?

I heard a speculation that Mateusz Morawiecki resigned from his bank position not just to become Beata Szydło's deputy, but to become the chairman of the (state-owned) Bank PKO BP. It probably won't happen, but it sounds so funny I'm posting it just in case.

Could make sense - BZWBK is owned by Santander, and from personal knowledge, the 'local' employees had no real control over the business as the decisions were made in Spain.

Recently Satander themselves (not just their BZWBK subsidiary) have begun advertising on the Polish market. What kind of business strategy could have motivated such a move?

Santander's business strategy in different markets has been to buy a large existing bank with considerable recognition as well as some smaller banks in each market, merge them together and then convert them to the Santander name once the process is complete. It's probable that the same thing is happening here - BZWBK doesn't have a great reputation, and this move allows them to benefit from their high profile sponsorships (such as their sponsorship of McLaren in Formula 1).

It certainly seems as if we'll see PKO BP and the PZU bank being the two big Polish banks and Santander/Bank Pekao being the two big foreign ones.

It would be about normal for there to be 4 big banks with a huge presence and a handful of other ones providing a more niche service - such as Citibank, ING, Deutsche Bank, etc etc.

The interesting question is where the SKOKi fit into all this.

The SKOKi exemplify what Poland needs more of -- indigenous Polish-owned financial institutions, retail chains and manufacturers of Polish-designed and branded products.

Well, the critical thing is that the SKOKi need to be under the same rules as other financial institutions. If this is achieved, then they can play an important part. The one thing that would be healthy would be limiting their territorial reach - it would make sense for each institution to only serve an individual province so that they stay focused on the customer and not on the ambitions of the management.

The other problem is that the situation within the SKOKi isn't great. The NBP wrote a report a few months ago saying that reform and repair of the sector needs to take place, but the problem is that the bigger SKOKi aren't institutionally able to take over smaller ones. In this case, it might well make sense to consolidate them and create a single SKOK chain for the country and allow it to operate more or less as a bank.


There are plenty of Polish retail chains - for instance...



All of these are Polish, and you'll find them in most malls in Poland and also in places such as the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

There are plenty of other examples in other fields too. But I agree - PiS could do very, very well by providing significant assistance to small and medium sized businesses. For instance, I know one company director (they produce fantastic IT products in a very specific field) that wishes that he could expand to Germany, but such a move would require considerable capital investment - they've already got a huge presence in the CEE countries, but to take on the German market would need in the region of 5 million złoty to put everything in place - and they simply don't have that kind of money in cash. Supporting these kind of businesses is definitely the way forward.

The other thing about the SKOKi - you will be well aware of the issues surrounding their governance. There are some major questions about their behaviour, including the way that over 150 million złoty ended up in Luxembourg.

polska.newsweek.pl/abw-przeszukala-spolke-grzegorza-biereckiego-senatora-pis-i-zalozyciela-skok,artykuly,375508,1.html

There's a very good article here about it. It essentially describes the situation with their corporate governance, and it shows why they need to be operated in a transparent manner like the commercial banks. I would go so far as saying that they should be prohibited from foreign investments - the money should stay in Poland and only be used for Polish investments.

Striclty niche operations and nothing to compete with Biedronka, Tesco, Praktiker, Leroy Merlin, Leclerc, Auchan, Marks & Spencer, etc.

Niche? Those brands are all over Poland, and many of them have operations abroad as well.

The big supermarkets - the problem is capital. It's not enough to simply build a few big stores, but you also need the entire logistics behind it. That's why you tend to see the same names in most countries, because they have pan-European buyers looking for the best deal. Biedronka is the odd one in all of this - they somehow managed to build a successful chain without it. If you go into Auchan, how on earth could a startup Polish company emulate that? It just wouldn't be possible.

It's the same reason why this bank/insurance tax is actually going to hurt PKO/PZU more than the smaller companies. I've seen one report that suggests that PZU will be hit by far the hardest with the insurance tax - which means that this is essentially a transfer of wealth from the Polish consumer to the government. The problem is that if PZU have to pay 0.6% tax on assets, there won't be much money left to buy up small banks.

Take my insurance policies for example - I use PZU because they're usually the cheapest or close to the cheapest. But this tax may drive up costs dramatically for me - so I'm going to go and look around. I haven't bothered up until now, but if my premiums increase considerably, I'm not going to stay with them - I'll chose a smaller insurer that might well be foreign-owned, and under the PiS plans, they won't be taxed as heavily.

As always, the devil is in the detail.