PKO looks to move East

Poland’s largest bank, PKO, is planning on opening offices in the Middle East, as well as in Asia and in London, a Polish press report stated on Friday. Zbigniew Jagiełło, the bank’s CEO, said that locating bank branches in the U.K., Dubai and Singapore would facilitate Polish companies’ increasing business activities in those regions. Jagiełło did not indicate in exactly which of the Asian locations the new branches would open, only that they would take place in the first quarter of 2017. He indicated that the London outlet could be either a branch or a representative office. PKP currently has an international presence in Ukraine and Sweden (though subsidiaries), including a branch in Frankfurt am Main, which it opened in December of 2015. The bank currently employs nearly 30,000 in Poland and abroad.