Spanish Santander to buy 70% of the Polish Bank Zachodni for 4 billion euros

Spanish bank Santander, the largest in the euro zone by market capitalization, won the auction for the right to buy out Irish rival Allied Irish Banks (AIB) controlling stake in Polish bank Bank Zachodni WBK. This, as reported on the website of the newspaper Vedomosti, wrote The Financial Times citing informed sources. Santander offered AIB, sell assets because of the difficult financial situation, four billion euros for 70% stake in Polish bank. This asset is also claimed by the French BNP Paribas, Fortis Netherlands and Poland's largest bank PKO.

In search of new opportunities outside covered recession Santander of Spain has recently been growing through acquisitions. In late August, he bought a British HSBC portfolio of U.S. auto loans for about $ 4 billion, and in March for the 1 billion - a platform for servicing automobile loans. Last month, Santander also acquired 318 British branches of Royal Bank of Scotland for 2.6 billion dollars. In late July, he bought 173 of the German branch of Swedish bank SEB, and in June reached an agreement with Bank of America to buy 24.9% stake in Mexican unit for 2.5 billion dollars. In a crisis in 2008 Santander absorbed the British bank Alliance & Leicester.

Earlier this week, FT, citing a source reported that Santander intends over the next year or two, almost one-third increase their number of employees working directly with clients (from 22 thousand to 28 thousand people). These figures do not include the 5 thousand employees, who joined the company as a result of purchases in August offices RBS.