Adam Piekarski, 42, runs the Polish offices of ExecutiveSurf and has lived in Poland, since the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. He is originally from Littleborough in England. Poland has an interesting past. As it moves forward, what should Poland and Polish people not forget about? Their vision of the future. They're too heavily anchored in their past. Do they have a vision for the future? Good question. They are better off than in the past, but perhaps they do not have a common vision. Poles as individuals are useless at compromising and drag each other down to the lowest common denominator, they envy others for being above them instead of rising to the challenge. When they're facing hardship together you'd be hard pushed to find a prouder and more single minded nation. Put the two together and you have a real challenge. Maybe they're so used to hardship and a good old struggle they fail to pick up on the good things in…
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David Thomas is CEO of Financier Sp zoo. He has been in Poland since 1989 and has worked at Country Head, Coopers and Lybrand, Schroder, where he was deputy ceo, ING Barings, where he headed up investment banking and HSBC where he was managing director. He is also chairman of the British Polish Chamber of Commerce (www.bpcc.org.pl). What does Financier do? We are a corporate finance boutique. Where can the most money be made at the moment and who is best placed to earn it and how? As a location I would say India. It is economically insulated and its internal demand stimulates growth. It is a very rapidly developing economy. Individually I would look to the stock market, probably at the beginning of next year; I would still consider the private equity market. There is a current drive to recruit hard-nosed, cost-cutting managers because of the recession. Will this help? If the current managers of a company do not know enough, I don’t think…
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Wojciech Roman is vice president of Deloitte Poland. He was previously partner in charge of the financial advisory services department. What do you do at Deloitte? Corporate finance advisory. This covers general M&A advisory, valuations, business analysis, financial modelling for transactions. We advise people who want to set up a company in Poland; we show them how to raise the finance, we conduct financial due diligence and provide analysis of companies in the process of transaction. What are your key areas of business? The main is M&A advisory, both on sell and the buy side. We advise Polish entrepreneurs in making exits. They may have set up a company in the 90s, manufacturing window frames, or a bank and the business has developed over time. They may want to leave or bring in more capital to grow; either way we can work with them and give them advice. And we help both strategic and financial investors to get into Polish businesses. Very significant is financial…
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