Poland starts compulsory restructuring of Getin Noble Bank

WARSAW (Reuters) -Poland’s Bank Guarantee Fund has started its compulsory restructuring of Getin Noble Bank, a private lender that faced collapse, the fund said on Friday.

The move will protect client deposits totalling 39.5 billion zloty ($7.98 billion) and safeguard the stability of the financial system, the fund’s statement said.

The process, effectively a state-managed takeover, will bring Getin Noble under control of a bridging bank on Oct. 3, including all private deposits and loans denominated in Polish zloty. Loans in foreign currencies are excluded from the process, the fund said.

The bridging bank shareholders will include the Bank Guarantee Fund and a unit held jointly by ING Bank Slaski, Alior Bank, Bank Millennium, Bank Pekao, BNP Paribas Bank Polska, mBank, PKO BP and Santander Bank Polska, the fund said.

In June the biggest commercial banks in Poland teamed up to create a protection scheme to help ensure their liquidity and solvency.

On Oct. 3 the protection scheme will acquire 49% of the bridging bank’s shares while the remaining 51% will be held by the Bank Guarantee Fund.

At 0830 GMT the Polish banking index was down 0.8%.

($1 = 4.9511 zlotys)

(Reporting by Marek Strzelecki, Pawel Florkiewicz and Adrianna EbertEditing by David Goodman)