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Piotr Kaminski

board member, PKO BP If Piotr Kaminski’s previous stints at Poland’s securities watchdog (KPWiG) and the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) are anything to go by, the 36-year-old board member of Poland’s mammoth savings bank, PKO BP, is a clear favourite to succeed close colleague Andrzej Podsiadlo as the bank’s next chief executive.
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Mr Kaminski headed KPWiG’s corporate finance department in 1995-2000 and was deputy chief executive of the WSE in 2000-2003. In charge of PKO’s corporate lending since March 2003, he helped groom the bank for its long-awaited privatisation and is now also responsible for its cash management and treasury units.

While PKO – which made a stunning debut on Warsaw’s stock market in November – boasts the largest share of Poland’s fiercely competitive retail market, it is only the fourth-largest corporate lender. Mr Kaminski relishes the challenge of growing the corporate business by aggressively targeting medium-sized companies, the backbone of Poland’s buoyant economy. PKO’s strong links to municipalities (in many small, rural towns it is the only bank) stands it in good stead to help co-finance projects in order to obtain EU aid.

Mr Kaminski is ambitious, knows corporate Poland inside out and has a knack for being in the right place at the right time. He worked closely with Jacek Socha, the former head of Poland’s financial regulator (and now treasury minister), in drawing up stringent securities regulations and was responsible for introducing the bourse’s new, state-of-the-art trading platform. Since he joined PKO, the bank has achieved its best financial results ever, with a 27% rise in net profit in the first three quarters of this year to 1.2bn zlotys ($375m).

Risks: Partial privatisations in Poland, a country renowned for political meddling, are always a risk. The state still owns 51% of PKO and therefore has a strong say in who runs the bank. As someone who “never wanted to work for government”, he may yet fall foul of PKO’s majority owner – especially if the government thinks he is being too frugal in lending to Poland’s legion of struggling small businesses.

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Read more about:  Central & Eastern Europe , Poland