Satellite television operator Cyfrowy Polsat will pay zł.3.75 billion to buy all the shares in terrestrial broadcaster Telewizja Polsat.

Both stations are owned by billionaire  tycoon Zygmunt Solorz-Żak.

Telewizja Polsat shareholders will receive zł.1.15 billion in shares, representing a 23-percent stake in Cyfrowy Polsat, in addition to zł.2.6 billion in cash. The deal is to be partially financed using bank loans.

Cyfrowy Polsat has 3.3 million customers while Telewizja Polsat has a 19-percent share of the market, meaning the merged entities will comprise Poland's largest media group. Combined, they made sales worth zł.2.4 billion as of June 2010.

“After the acquisition of Telwizja Polsat, the key elements of our strategy will remain unchanged,” said Cyfrowy Polsat's president Dominik Libicki.

“We are concentrating on the growth in paid television, development of broadband access to the internet and cellular telephony, as well as the launching of new products.”

After the announcement, shares in Cyfrowy Polsat went up by two percent, but analysts were less than impressed.

“This is having your cake and eating it,” Adam Drozdowski, director at investment fund Axa TFI, said in front of the cameras of TVN CNBC. “Generally speaking this is the majority shareholder of one firm and also of the other who sells it to himself and still keeps control. And probably he'll use the two billion six hundred, which he gets in cash, on other projects.”