Munich  -  UniCredit's German banking arm, HypoVereinsbank (HVB), is to transfer some of its operations to Poland at a cost of 250 German jobs, the news magazine Der Spiegel reported Saturday.

The Milan-based banking group, is already one of the principal retail banking companies in Poland.

Der Spiegel said the move of so-called back-office functions was aimed at reducing UniCredit's heavy operational costs in Germany and part of long-term efforts to combine the back-office functions of the 23 nations where UniCredit is active.

Such payments operations have no direct contact with customers and therefore do not need to cater to local languages or customs.

It said a first step would be to create a back-office "factory" serving the Italian bank group's subsidiaries in seven nations.

A Munich daily newspaper, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, quoted HVB confirming that an additional 300 HVB staff in functions such as property management and internal mail delivery would be shifted to outsourcing companies.

It said HVB was considering selling those company divisions to other German companies such as Deutsche Post. German trade unions feared up to 1,800 of HVB's 23,000 staff might be affected by the various cost-cutting plans. (dpa)