Weil, Gotschal promotes several Polish-American staffers to partner
The Weil, Gotshal chiefs were voting December 6 to convey partner status to Erik Rosedale, a real estate lawyer from New York; Roman Rewald, who returned from Detroit early in the transition as an expert with the World Bank; and Anna Frankowska, a securities specialist who moved to Weil, Gotshal from Altheimer & Gray earlier this decade along with Polish securities expert Marek Wierzbowski.
Last month, Weil, Gotshal's New York head office announced that Wierzbowski would be senior partner and Pawel Rymarz managing partner of the Warsaw office, with Joseph Tortorici commuting in from Prague as chief of the overall Central and European business.
That was in the wake of Zdzislaw Wieckowski's departure as managing partner to become partner at Hogan&Hartson.
Rymarz is a mergers and acquisitions specialist, especially in telecoms and finance, and is a lead adviser for private telecom operator RP Telecom/Netia. Wierzbowski is a towering figure - at well over 6-foot-2 - and also has heft in the securities industry. He chairs both the supervisory board of the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) and the Arbitration Court of the Chamber of Brokerage Houses.
One person not mentioned in the announcements but still very much a part of the Weil, Gotshal Warsaw scene: Bill Sievers, the tall, dark and handsome American now working in London, who opened the firm's operations in Poland early this decade. He is still a potent force. Maybe too much so for the autonomy of the Warsaw operation - or maybe an invaluable resource for it.
Depends on who you talk to, and on which day.
But as one insider put it, "there have been all these assumptions that there's a lot of disarray and chaos - but that's not really true. And these new appointments show that." And, as a partner, Sievers came in for the vote.
• • •
The Dec. 2 AmCham address by U.S. Ambassador Daniel Fried was something of a celebratory one - for Poland. This is a watershed era, he said, the first time in 350 years when Poland not only is secure but is succeeding economically and politically.
Early this decade, Fried was bullish on Poland, as a top embassy employee but was always locking horns with skeptical U.S. "experts" who said the reforms wouldn't work; or, then, in 1992, they wouldn't go forward once reformer Leszek Balcerowicz had been pushed aside. But Poland proved the outsiders wrong and their "expert" reports are also in the annals of history.
Today, unlike in countries in crisis further East, "We don't worry about free elections; a military coup, an International Monetary Fund visit. Or the 'big beer' and 'little beer' political parties which we did worry about in the (politically disruptive elections) in the early 1990s," Fried said.
"That's over. And the fact that it's over is a historical achievement," he said. Although Poland's government still needs to be more transparent, with fewer permit-and-license barriers and probably with a cut in income taxes, there has been major progress this year - in sharp contrast to expectations - by moving forward on local democracy, pension reform, health system changes and on coal and steel-sector reforms. What this coalition needed from Parliament it has gotten, for the most part, and while there are political rumbles of discontent "this is not political paralysis."
He praised as "politically courageous" the decision to go ahead with floating 15% of telephone monopoly Telekomunikacja Polska (TPSA) this fall, after it was clear the stock prices would be lower after the Russian crisis than if they had been able to sell it off last spring.
Today's embassy activity revolves increasingly around Poland-as-ally issues and the country seems poised to become "an exceptional ally," he said, with high marks given Foreign Minister Bronislaw Geremek in his leadership this year of the peacekeeping Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) operation. And Poland has successfully combined an expansion of democracy alongside the drama of economic changes (something the current Russian prime minister has just declared is nonsense to expect there).
Fried noted the furor at a recent regional Asian summit when Vice President Al Gore's called for "participatory democracy" - something that would have been a yawner in Poland.
"The much-vaunted 'Asian miracle' proved to be ideological scaffolding for putting your opponents in prison," he said.
There is second-guessing going on even about one of the widespread negative images about Poland in the West - that Poles are "chaotic." Sometimes that is meant to mean they have a self-destructive instinct, sometimes, that they lack discipline. At a recent business conference, however, Fried said a German official "flipped this 'Polish chaos' stereotype on its head and said 'What's wrong with that? We'd like to have some of that 'chaos.' "
Meaning that the Germans could do with some of the Polish entrepreneurial spirit which enables them to dodge all sorts of obstacles in their way to put in place an enviable and vibrant grass roots private business base.
Fried said that of course problems remain - and he urged investors to alert the embassy when there appear to be patterns of abuse, beyond problems of an individual company.
• • •
Kate Pope spent her last three weeks of duty at Australia's visa office helping out, as a volunteer, with a relief drive for Central America. And she says Poles and expatriates responded - and then some.
Kristi Roberts' 8th graders at the American School took it on as a project. The Estonian and Japanese embassies came forth in force to help. So did PricewaterhouseCoopers and Firma 2000. And many diplomats and business leaders helped support a benefit concert organized by the Guatamalan Embassy two weeks ago.
So now it's back to home turf for the first time in nine years for Pope, who is from a gold mining town in Australia.
Last month, Weil, Gotshal's New York head office announced that Wierzbowski would be senior partner and Pawel Rymarz managing partner of the Warsaw office, with Joseph Tortorici commuting in from Prague as chief of the overall Central and European business.
That was in the wake of Zdzislaw Wieckowski's departure as managing partner to become partner at Hogan&Hartson.
Rymarz is a mergers and acquisitions specialist, especially in telecoms and finance, and is a lead adviser for private telecom operator RP Telecom/Netia. Wierzbowski is a towering figure - at well over 6-foot-2 - and also has heft in the securities industry. He chairs both the supervisory board of the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) and the Arbitration Court of the Chamber of Brokerage Houses.
One person not mentioned in the announcements but still very much a part of the Weil, Gotshal Warsaw scene: Bill Sievers, the tall, dark and handsome American now working in London, who opened the firm's operations in Poland early this decade. He is still a potent force. Maybe too much so for the autonomy of the Warsaw operation - or maybe an invaluable resource for it.
Depends on who you talk to, and on which day.
But as one insider put it, "there have been all these assumptions that there's a lot of disarray and chaos - but that's not really true. And these new appointments show that." And, as a partner, Sievers came in for the vote.
• • •
The Dec. 2 AmCham address by U.S. Ambassador Daniel Fried was something of a celebratory one - for Poland. This is a watershed era, he said, the first time in 350 years when Poland not only is secure but is succeeding economically and politically.
Early this decade, Fried was bullish on Poland, as a top embassy employee but was always locking horns with skeptical U.S. "experts" who said the reforms wouldn't work; or, then, in 1992, they wouldn't go forward once reformer Leszek Balcerowicz had been pushed aside. But Poland proved the outsiders wrong and their "expert" reports are also in the annals of history.
Today, unlike in countries in crisis further East, "We don't worry about free elections; a military coup, an International Monetary Fund visit. Or the 'big beer' and 'little beer' political parties which we did worry about in the (politically disruptive elections) in the early 1990s," Fried said.
"That's over. And the fact that it's over is a historical achievement," he said. Although Poland's government still needs to be more transparent, with fewer permit-and-license barriers and probably with a cut in income taxes, there has been major progress this year - in sharp contrast to expectations - by moving forward on local democracy, pension reform, health system changes and on coal and steel-sector reforms. What this coalition needed from Parliament it has gotten, for the most part, and while there are political rumbles of discontent "this is not political paralysis."
He praised as "politically courageous" the decision to go ahead with floating 15% of telephone monopoly Telekomunikacja Polska (TPSA) this fall, after it was clear the stock prices would be lower after the Russian crisis than if they had been able to sell it off last spring.
Today's embassy activity revolves increasingly around Poland-as-ally issues and the country seems poised to become "an exceptional ally," he said, with high marks given Foreign Minister Bronislaw Geremek in his leadership this year of the peacekeeping Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) operation. And Poland has successfully combined an expansion of democracy alongside the drama of economic changes (something the current Russian prime minister has just declared is nonsense to expect there).
Fried noted the furor at a recent regional Asian summit when Vice President Al Gore's called for "participatory democracy" - something that would have been a yawner in Poland.
"The much-vaunted 'Asian miracle' proved to be ideological scaffolding for putting your opponents in prison," he said.
There is second-guessing going on even about one of the widespread negative images about Poland in the West - that Poles are "chaotic." Sometimes that is meant to mean they have a self-destructive instinct, sometimes, that they lack discipline. At a recent business conference, however, Fried said a German official "flipped this 'Polish chaos' stereotype on its head and said 'What's wrong with that? We'd like to have some of that 'chaos.' "
Meaning that the Germans could do with some of the Polish entrepreneurial spirit which enables them to dodge all sorts of obstacles in their way to put in place an enviable and vibrant grass roots private business base.
Fried said that of course problems remain - and he urged investors to alert the embassy when there appear to be patterns of abuse, beyond problems of an individual company.
• • •
Kate Pope spent her last three weeks of duty at Australia's visa office helping out, as a volunteer, with a relief drive for Central America. And she says Poles and expatriates responded - and then some.
Kristi Roberts' 8th graders at the American School took it on as a project. The Estonian and Japanese embassies came forth in force to help. So did PricewaterhouseCoopers and Firma 2000. And many diplomats and business leaders helped support a benefit concert organized by the Guatamalan Embassy two weeks ago.
So now it's back to home turf for the first time in nine years for Pope, who is from a gold mining town in Australia.
