When Leszek Czarnecki made his first fortune in the 1990s, he dabbled with the idea of spending some of his newly acquired millions on becoming a space tourist. Instead, the serial capitalist plunged back into business, creating Poland’s fastest-growing bank, which is now looking at aggressively expanding into Russia and Ukraine.
Mr Czarnecki’s Getin Holding reported profits of 82m zlotys (€21m) for the first six months of this year, compared with profits of 32m zlotys for the same period in 2005. It is Poland’s 14th bank in terms of capital, eighth in terms of sales, fifth in mortgages and second in car loans.
