PKO BP and Poczta Polska are fighting for control over Bank Pocztowy Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

 Treasury Minister Mikołaj Budzanowski and Minister of Administration and Digitization Michał Boni are butting heads over who should control Bank Pocztowy, a lender that offers banking services at Poland’s post offices.

State-owned PKO BP, Poland’s largest bank, holds a 25 percent stake in Bank Pocztowy and is on the lookout for takeover targets. It has repeatedly offered to take over a majority share from Poczta Polska (Polish Post), the state-run postal services firm that owns the remaining 75 percent, but to no avail.

PKO says Bank Pocztowy needs a capital increase of some zł.500 million. Its most recent offer, made in February, proposed a capital increase of zł.380 million, zł.290 million of which would be paid by PKO. In return, PKO would receive an additional 25 percent of shares and an option to buy the remaining ones in the upcoming years.

After that offer was rebuffed by Poczta Polska, which said it was now considering buying out PKO for full ownership of the firm, the ministers began sounding off.

Treasury Minister Budzanowski has come out strongly in support of PKO. “From the standpoint of the banking sector, the move to consolidate Bank Pocztowy with PKO BP is the most rational one,” he told reporters last week.

On the other hand Minister Boni, whose ministry supervises Poczta Polska, has publicly said that he favors the postal service taking over all of Bank Pocztowy’s shares.

At the heart of the matter is PKO’s expansion plans versus Poczta Polska’s need for additional revenue streams. Both want to control a rapidly growing bank that could gain a significant chunk of the market among elderly Poles, many of whom don’t have a bank account and still pay their bills at the post office.

Jacek Ciesnowski