Erste Group

You know, the forever labor shortage, digital transformation, digitization of work, uh, the endless need to do more with less, and kind of AI comes into some of that conversation as well.

Pleased to have with us Robert Szemethdy with Erste Bank, which is, I think, a German first bank in Ger- in, uh, in Europe.

And I'll have him introduce himself in a second.

But I'm really enjoying, you know, the opportunity to bring somebody in that's not a consultant, not a software developer.

I've spent some time in Silicon Valley, so I've been doing everything from, uh, uh, capital equipment for semiconductors, was doing, uh, dead tank breakers at ABB, and my first job out of school was actually I was a, uh, worked in the coal mines for three years doing, uh, underground construction, so.

Wow.

Now I work for, for Erste Bank.

Uh, we are a financial institution, basically a savings bank, retail bank in Central Eastern Europe, covering essentially the old Habsburg Empire and now, uh, we just recently acquired Poland, uh, a bank in Poland.

Okay, so that is with the UK home builders.

Let's go to Austria next and Erste Bank.

What's the news from them?

Well, we got the news, uh, late on Friday evening actually, um, that Erste Bank is planning to lift its ownership in its recently acquired Polish subsidiary.

They're boosting it to as much as 75%.

That's from 49%, so significant, and that is a bid, uh, worth up to 18.9 billion, uh, zloty and, uh, $4.9 billion.

Um, it's thought that the bank could fund this increase, uh, by canceling dividends.

Uh, that's according to Morgan Stanley analyst, uh, who also expects this positive, uh, share price reaction, so perhaps we could see it moving higher throughout the morning, um, saying that it's strategically and financially attractive as well.