A proposal from last autumn by Poland’s new president Andrzej Duda to re-nationalize Poland’s banking sector is attracting much attention from the country’s coalition party PiS (Law and Justice). This shift has come to light as momentum increases for PZU’s attempt to take over three banks in order to create the country’s fourth largest lender (by assets). PZU (Poland’s largest insurer) has already applied to Poland’s anti-monopoly regulator to take over Alior Bank and is believed to be interested in BPH and Raiffeisen Polbank as well. It’s thought that the top leadership of Poland’s largest state-owned companies secretly support the idea to increase the share of local capital in Poland’s banking sector.
However, the Law and Justice party (PiS) is now openly promoting the idea. “I accept the process to nationalize the Polish banking sector in the hands of some of the most prominent individuals in the country… It’s been said few years ago that capital has a nationality, and the processes we’re currently observing on the Polish market illustrate the fact. It’s a shame we needed so much time to come to this conclusion,” Zbigniew Kuźmiuk of Law and Justice (PiS) told newseria.pl.
