Italy's Intesa Sanpaolo said it was looking at the books of AIB's unit Bank Zachodni WBK (BZ WBK) with a view to possibly making a bid.

The head of BZ WBK said four meetings had been held with possible buyers of Allied Irish's 70pc stake in the bank, which has a market value of $3 billion, but would not elaborate.

Reuters reported last week that France's BNP Paribas was also in the running, while other media named Poland's top bank PKO BP and Spain's Santander as the other two short-listed bidders.

Allied Irish and the possible bidders have declined to comment on the sale, except for Intesa, whose chief executive said on Wednesay the company was looking at BZ WBK's books.

"The due diligence is at a good point, then we will make an evaluation," Corrado Passera told reporters in Rome as he entered a meeting of the Italian Banking Association's executive committee.

BZ WBK, which has relied on advertising campaigns featuring foreign actors such as Gerard Depardieu and Danny DeVito to boost its deposit base, has weathered the financial crisis better than most of Poland's banks.

However, the lender posted an unexpected 2 percent drop in second-quarter net profit on Wednesday after bad loan provisions outdistanced market expectations, but the weaker results should have little effect on the sale negotiations.

"Thankfully, there are no surprises in these results, given their importance at a time when Allied Irish Banks is trying to execute a sale," Stephen Lyons, an analyst at Davy Stockbrokers, said in Dublin. " These numbers reinforce the attractiveness of Allied Irish's 70 percent stake." Analysts said the figures were not a big disappointment. BZ WBK shares were down 1.6 percent at 188.7 zlotys by 1103 GMT compared to 0.35 percent drop of Warsaw's main index. Second-quarter net profit was 250 million zlotys ($81.3 million) compared to a mean estimate of 262 million in a Reuters poll of six analysts. Provisions for soured loans stood at 146 million zlotys, some 20 million more than analysts had predicted. "From the quality point of view, the results are very good. Costs are under control and the provisions are not a concern," said Marcin Jablczynski, an analyst at Deutsche Bank in Warsaw. Poland, seeking to cut the 70 percent participation of foreign players in its banking system, is backing an expected bid by state-controlled PKO BP.