Mirosław Nowicki

Chairman of Forin

   Mirosław Nowicki launched his own metal-trading company while studying as a commercial-law student at Warsaw University, juggling college with frequent trips abroad as well as supporting a family. Although his business was doing well, Nowicki eventually decided that finance would provide him with better long-term career prospects. When he joined Bank Inicjatyw Gospodarczych (BIG Bank) in 1993, there were no factoring firms on the Polish market, and only one bank offered factoring services. It was up to Nowicki, therefore, to set up factoring at BIG Bank, establishing the procedures, training the staff and preparing the bank’s first contracts, while working as the bank’s director of receivables trading. Today, he considers his greatest professional achievement as bringing BIG Bank’s commercial, leasing and state-sector liabilities to more than zł. 700 million ($166 million), equal to the bank’s loan portfolio.

   By 1994, after the merger of BIG with Bank Gdański (BIG BG), Nowicki joined the bank’s central credit committee as risk assessor of the financial institution’s biggest loans. The following year, he joined the supervisory board of Bel Leasing to sort out the firm’s financing problems. He also became chairman of Forinwest, a company that oversees the development of new BIG BG branches. In 1997, he was named director of the bank’s central business center, where he headed up a project aimed at increasing sales and setting up BIG BG business centers. In 1999, BIG BG set up the factoring firm, Forin, and Nowicki was appointed the company’s chairman in charge of transferring the factoring contracts of all the banks in the group to the new firm.

   Past notes:

   1988 – Started a metal trading company

   1992 – Graduated in company law from Warsaw University

   1994 – Director of the receivables trading department of BIG Bank

   1995 – Chairman of Forinwest

   1997 – Member of the board of Bel Leasing

   1999 – Chairman of Forin

   Word of advice:

   “The most important skill is the ability to sell and to see things in terms of sales. It’s the only company activity that brings revenue.”