LONDON — The French bank BNP Paribas has agreed to acquire a controlling stake of the Polish unit of Rabobank Group in a deal valued at about $1.36 billion.
As part of the deal announced on Thursday, the Dutch lender Rabobank would transfer to BNP Paribas a 98.5 percent stake in Bank Gospodarki Żywnościowej valued at 4.2 billion Polish zlotys. The deal is subject to regulatory approval.
It would increase the size of BNP Paribas’s Polish footprint amid a wave of consolidation in the Polish banking sector in recent years.
“The acquisition of Bank BGŻ constitutes a major step towards attaining a critical size in Poland,” said Jean-Laurent Bonnafé, the chief executive of BNP Paribas. “The transaction will establish the BNP Paribas Group as a reference player in Poland’s banking sector.”
In June, PKO Bank Polski, Poland’s largest bank, agreed to buy the Polish business of the Swedish lender Nordea Bank for 2.83 billion Polish zlotys.
The Spanish lender Banco Santander acquired Kredyt Bank and merged it with its Bank Zachodni WBK unit, creating Poland’s third-largest lender in January.
The latest deal comes just over a month after Rabobank, the largest Dutch lender, admitted to criminal wrongdoing by its employees in setting global benchmark interest rates. The bank agreed to pay more than $1 billion in criminal and civil penalties to settle investigations by American, British and other authorities. Its chief executive stepped down immediately after the announcement.
Rabobank said in August that its profit declined by 14 percent to 175 million euros ($238.4 million) in the first half of 2013, driven by a decline in domestic spending in the Netherlands.
Shares of BNP Paribas were up 1.4 percent to €53.09 in trading Thursday morning.
An earlier version of the headline with this post misstated the type of transaction between BNP Paribas and Rabobank. BNP Paribas is buying a controlling stake in the Polish unit of Rabobank, not a stake in Rabobank.