Poles signed waiting lists Sunday for a chance to buy shares in their largest bank, using a signup system from communist times to impose order on the crush of interested investors

Monday marks their first chance to register for shares in state-owned PKO Bank Polski, which intends to float 30 percent of its shares in central Europe's largest initial public offering of the year and Poland's biggest since a 1998 telecom IPO. The government hopes the partial privatization will raise $1.6 billion. PKO BP was giving ordinary Poles only Monday to sign up for a first batch of shares - a bottleneck expected to lead to jostling crowds outside its 950 nationwide branches. Police have said they will be on hand. The government said Sunday it was raising the stock volume available for signup Monday to about 7 percent of the bank's share capital, from the 4 percent originally planned.