ING Bank Śląski, the Polish bank majority owned by the Netherlands’ ING Bank, has signed a non-binding letter of intent to sell its 20% stake in the pension management company ING PTE to Amsterdam-based ING Continental Europe Holdings.
The latter already holds 80% of the pension company’s shares.
ING PTE manages the ING open pension fund (OFE) and a voluntary pension fund (DFE).
Of the 13 OFEs, it is the market leader, with 18% of membership and 24% of net assets as of the end of March.
The price has been set at approximately PLN242m (€58m).
On its website, the bank stated that this would be adjusted depending on the dividends paid out by ING PTE in 2013 and 2014, as well as two factors resulting from this year’s reform of the second-pillar system.
One is the number of pension fund members its OFE retains this year.
Between April and July, Poland’s 16.7m OFE members have to inform ZUS, the Polish Social Insurance Institution, whether they want to continue paying the 2.92% social contribution into the second pillar.
The alternative (default) option is that their full 19.52% future contributions go to the first pillar.
In April, only some 61,000 had chosen the second-pillar system.
The second factor concerns the outcomes of any legal challenges to the Constitutional Tribunal, Poland’s constitutional court.
The two parties expect to sign a binding sale agreement in the fourth quarter of 2014, pending approval from the Polish Financial Supervision Authority.
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