WARSAW (AFP) -- Italian banking group UniCredit signed a 625.5-million-euro (855-million-dollar) deal Friday to sell its majority stake in Poland's BPH bank to U.S. financial services outfit GE Money, BPH announced.

In a statement, BPH said that UniCredit would sell ""close to"" 66 percent of its 71.03-percent stake to GE Money, which is part of the U.S. conglomerate General Electric.
The deal marks the final chapter of what was a bitter dispute between UniCredit and the Polish government over the Italian group's involvement in the Poland's banking sector.
The transaction still requires approval from the Polish banking commission, but is expected to be finalized by the end of the year, the statement said.
UniCredit found itself bogged down in a bitter battle with Polish authorities after it acquired BPH, Poland's third-largest bank, as part of its takeover of the then owner of BPH, Germany's HypoVereinsbank (HVB), in 2005.
The Italian group had already taken over Poland's formerly state-owned Pekao bank when it was privatized in 1999.
UniCredit began to merge Pekao and BPH, but ran into opposition from Poland's conservative government, which had taken office in November 2005, a month after the European Commission had approved the UniCredit-HVB merger.
The Polish Treasury said that under the terms of the 1999 privatization contract for Pekao, UniCredit was barred from buying any other banks in Poland.
But UniCredit, referring to the European Union principle of free capital movement, argued that Poland's accession to the EU in 2004 had effectively nullified that clause.
The row brought warnings and legal proceedings against Poland from the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, which accused Warsaw of illegally blocking the merger.
After negotiations, the Polish government and UniCredit reached a deal to end the dispute in April 2006, under which UniCredit pledge to sell 200 of the 483 branches of BPH bank.
The branches, together with the BPH brand name, were to be sold to an independent third party within 30 months, while the rest of BPH was to be incorporated into Pekao to create the biggest bank in Poland.
GE Money, which has been present in the Polish market since 1995 and specializes in mortgage lending, is to become the country's fifth-largest banking operation after the takeover is finalized