Moody's affirms Santander BP's rating at 'A2' with stable outlook

The rating action is prompted by the bank's announcement on May 5, 2025, that Austrian Erste Group Bank AG has reached an agreement to acquire a controlling 49 percent stake in Santander BP (SBP) from Banco Santander, S.A. (SBC), SBP's current controlling shareholder with a 62.2 percent stake.

Erste plans to acquire a 49 percent controlling stake in SBC and 50 percent of Santander's Polish asset management business. Before the transaction closes, Santander will acquire SBP's 60 percent ownership in Santander Consumer Bank S.A. (SCB), and as a result SCB will be deconsolidated from SBP.

"The affirmation of SBP's baa2 BCA reflects our view that, upon its completion, the transaction will have a limited financial impact on SBP's standalone credit profile and that execution risks associated with the deal will be well managed," Moody's said in the statement.

The agency pointed to the relatively small size of Santander BP as the Polish branch accounted for a relatively low share of SBP's balance sheet, representing 6 percent of consolidated assets, 9 percent of loans, and 7 percent of deposits as of end-2024.

"We expect the sale of SCB to have a positive impact on SBP's capitalisation, which, however, may be temporary depending on the financial plan developed with its new owner, drive a marginal improvement in the bank's ratio of nonperforming loans to gross loans, and be broadly neutral in terms of funding and liquidity," Moody's assessed.

"Although SCB is a very profitable business, we expect SBP's profitability to remain strong even following the sale of SCB, with a more significant influence from the path interest rates will follow in Poland and the costs related to the legal risks the bank faces from its exposure to Swiss-franc mortgages, which we anticipate will be lower in 2025 than the year before," it added.

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