CeTo tries and tries; legal honcho's Socrates lesson

Wrong. The NIF program was delayed repeatedly and then getting new asset-valuation numbers for the 512 underlying NIF companies from the Securities Commission prior to the listing proved to be a bear in itself. The last thing the harassed NIF managers wanted to do was put together separate prospectuses - even simplified ones - for the CeTo market.
Gradually, CeTo looked to fry other fish: private small and medium-sized companies who saw the OTC as a way to get capital to help them grow. It also helped that Securities Commission chief Jacek Socha hung in there despite much high-profile grumbling from Wieslaw Rozlucki, president of the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE), about unwanted competition from CeTo to the still-emerging WSE.
Grajek told the story in numbers to last week's EuroForum Securities Industry conference of the growth that has been escalating since the change in focus.
"We had two securities in January 1997 and ended with 14 by the end of December. Currently, we have 24. The market cap was zl. 19 million ($5.5 million) in April 1997 and by December it was $37 million. And it is $164 million right now," he said, adding, "We are growing."
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So what was the Weil, Gotshal & Manges managing partner doing talking to 9th graders at the American School? Talking Socrates, that's what.
Zdzislaw Wieckowski, it turns out, is passionate about talking about the law and how it works. And he used the trial of Socrates to describe the principles of the law to the middle-schoolers.
"I read four or five pages from the dialogue of the trial," he said, and then asked the students what they thought it meant. This created a dialogue about what the law is used for, in terms of core principles of a democratic society - as well as the principles of the "Socratic method" of teaching ideas.
It's similar to how complicated ideas are dissected at Harvard Law School, Wieckowski's alma mater. His parents emigrated from Poland and took a circuitous route to Canada and then to the United States.
He considers Boston to be where he was raised. It also was where he began practicing law until he was recruited to come to Poland to succeed Bill Sievers as head honcho at Weil, Gotshal late last year.
And who hustled him to break loose from downtown deadlines to talk to the 9th graders? Well, it helps that he has a son there. But his wife Gretchen - a small-business computer entrepreneur back in Boston - also is working in the school hierarchy.
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Big rumors afoot that one of the first beneficiaries of a merged Wizja TV and Canal+ Polska could be the high-talent professionals in the film and drama world. That's partly because Lew Rywin is a key player in the merged apparatus. He heads investment company Polcom but also is chairman of Telewizyjna Korporacja Partycypacyjna (TKP), the parent of Canal+ Polska.
Rywin was one of the producers of "Schindler's List" and has a long string of other Polish films. He was part of the pressure for local-production capability for Canal+, which presumably now will be transferred into the merged digital company Wizja+.
Best-guess startup funding, according to the rumor mills: that the new company would provide financing for Andrzej Wajda's production of the Polish classic "Pan Tadeusz."
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For you traveling folks, Delta chief Frank Joost says that as of mid-April he has a system in place whereby customers can pay by credit card for the bargain-fare specials they're offering. Before that, only American Express was allowing credit card payment; everyone else demanded cash. And usually they didn't tell you that until you were showing up to pay for the ticket - hundreds of dollars of tickets, usually.
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With the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) meeting coming up in Kiev, the traffic at the Ukrainian embassy has been heavier than usual. And there seems to have been a speed up in service, as well: for those with actual invites from the EBRD, a visa could be processed almost on the spot. That beats the old record of several days or more.
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Got the cameras ready? It's past the flowering-tree time but the tulips planted by the city in various rondos and parks are turning out to be spectacular this year. And they're being sculpted, not just laid down in rows. Check out Rondo ONZ for a fantastic view.