La Poste Group in talks to buy French bank
La Poste Group is in talks to buy the entire share capital of the European Private Bank (BPE), it said yesterday. The French postal operator said that together with the supervisory board of its banking subsidiary, La Banque Postale, its directors met this week to authorise the start of negotiations with the BPE’s parent company, Crédit Mutuel Arkéa.
BPE currently has 321 employees and 32 branches in major French cities across the country. It also offers asset management services out of offices in Paris and Brittany.
The bank holds EUR 3.1bn in deposits, and currently loans out EUR 2.8bn in customer credit. Banking income is about EUR 59.5m a year, with around EUR 7.3m in profits.
La Poste said it believed that definitive agreements to buy the company should be in place by the end of this year.
“By this action, La Banque Postale will be able to better serve its customers by offering a full range of proprietary products and services tailored to their needs,” the company said in a statement.
“This is one of the priorities defined within La Banque Postale’s strategic plan for 2011-2015.”
La Banque Postale currently accounts for about EUR 5.2bn in revenue each year, with 10.38m active customers and 450,000 corporate/institutional clients, 17,000 points of customer contact and EUR 290bn being offered in customer credit.
