It has previously invested in Austrian lender Bawag, the old HSH Nordbank in Germany (now Hamburg Commercial Bank) and HSBC’s former French retail bank (recently renamed CCF). Now, on Thursday, US private equity company Cerberus Capital Management has completed the purchase of an 80.2% stake in a top-10 lender by assets in Poland – VeloBank, based on the good bits of the former Getin Noble Bank.
Getin Noble suffered from severe credit losses and litigation costs in Swiss franc mortgages. Although Swiss franc mortgages have caused heavy losses across much of the Polish banking sector for the past two decades, Getin Noble was particularly aggressive in distributing the product in the mid 2000s, under former controlling shareholder and chairman Leszek Czarnecki.
As the problem dragged on due to industry-wide court decisions, Getin Noble’s Swiss franc mortgage losses eventually rose so high that it led to a resolution process overseen by Polish bank guarantee fund BFG in 2022.
VeloBank’s sale to Cerberus, however, looks like another sign of a new chapter in Polish banking since Donald Tusk returned as Polish prime minister in December, after he defeated the former ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) in elections in October.
