Polish equity market retreated on Friday. The broad market benchmark, the WIG index, fell by 0.5%. The WIG sub-sector indices were mainly lower with banking sector (-1.84%) underperforming.

The large-cap stocks' measure, the WIG30 Index, dropped by0.45%. In the WIG30 index basket, banking name PEKAO (WSE: PEO) was hit the hardest, down 4.35%. Poland's deputy prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki stated that the Polish state-run insurer PZU (WSE: PZU; +1.46%) and Polish Development Fund (PFR) are in the final stage of talks with Italy's UniCredit over buying its stake in PEKAO. Other largest decliners were chemical producer SYNTHOS (WSE: SNS) and two banks MILLENNIUM (WSE: MIL) and MBANK (WSE: MBK), which lost between 2.51% and 3.14%. On the other side of the ledger, gencos PGE (WSE: PGE) and ENERGA (WSE: ENG) were among the biggest advancers, climbing by a respective 3.01% and 2.82%, as Poland's energy minister Krzysztof Tchorzewski stated the country's state-run utilities will not be expected to invest more money to support the country's troubled coal mining firms.