Who will succeed Gronkiewicz-Waltz is anyone's guess
W
ho takes over as head of the National Bank of Poland (NBP) was a major chewing-the-fat topic last week when Western reporters had an introductory lunch with new U.S. Ambassador Christopher Hill.
Not far behind was speculation about the reasons for why outgoing NBP President Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz would leave for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) at such a delicate time in Poland's economy.
She was arm-twisted to join the EBRD even more vigorously this past summer than a year ago when she had turned down an offer, some said. Others said that while Gronkiewicz-Waltz certainly has more proven credentials than her Czech counterpart who fought to get the job, she has also lost some of her magic. Her missteps on money control and interest rates have reignited inflation and so, some said, she might have seen this as good a time as any to jump ship, despite having another three years left of her term.
No big revelations came from the embassy officials. Hill talked about the night-and-day aspects of Poland today compared to when he served here in the mid-1980s. When he left his most recent posting in Macedonia to take the top job in Poland, he used Poland's remarkable progress to give hope to the Macedonians.
Not only is Poland a standout among transition countries (despite the inflation problems and the stock market slide), it is now so "normal" that an ambassador can have tea and cake with a neighbor, former President and General Wojciech Jaruzelski, without causing an international incident.
CA IB Securities is seeing changes both at the top, where Alicja Kornasiewicz is taking over for Wolfgang Bauer, and in its innards.
For starters, top IT analyst Pawel Wroblewski has been body snatched. At a time when the German government has mounted a crisis campaign to import IT talent, causing anger as well as fear and trembling in the small-but-successful IT markets here and in other transition countries, Wroblewski is heading for the United States. For weeks after giving notice he was mum about where he was going, but by late October he revealed that it was to Oppenheimer, a New York asset-management company.
Grzegorz Kalin-Czerski is taking over an expanded IT portfolio. And in one of his final moves before leaving for Vienna, Bauer announced that CA IB's banking analyst Tadeusz Kozaczynski would become head of securities research.
The Royal Castle's "Winged Horseman" exhibit of Poland's "golden age" of art between the 15th-17th centuries is in its final month after a successful U.S. tour of five major museums.
It hasn't been a blockbuster but it has done well, said curator Agnieszka Morawinska. In the meantime, she's working against time on an exhibit of Polish art for the European Union headquarters in Brussels next year when Poland follows Hungary as the transition country in the spotlight there. That's a challenge when the overall theme of the exhibit still hasn't been 100% nailed down by the politicians.
And speaking of museums: the Solidarity museum at the Gdansk shipyard is a knockout. It's small but high-tech, and offers interactive computer text, photographs and other archival material.
The entryway is an evocative copper sculpture meant to resemble a ship's hull, financed by Mostostal. It works to set the scene and then some, with a real-life welder inside finishing up some of the ironwork on the floor, casting sparks on visitors walking through.
Jerzy Holzer was a key adviser and curator.
It was opened in time for the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Solidarity workers' movement last August.
And for newcomers there is unbeatable video footage to help fill in the gaps on those days of hardship and drama. The footage includes the didactic speeches of former communist rulers, some of the discussions between government-appointed and fledgling Solidarity negotiators during the shipyard strike, and shots of the thousands of workers who gathered outside to listen to the negotiations broadcast on loudspeakers live from inside the union hall.
Polish-challenged expatriates might want to wait a bit until the museum adds translations of photograph captions, a catalog hopefully in multiple languages as well as language options for the computerized, interactive exhibits.
And what about foreign-language translations via earphones for those watching the video footage, so that outsiders can better grasp the enormity of the drama that occurred here?
Bank Handlowy has had an active mergers-and-acquisitions (M & A) operation, with transactions expected to be in the range of $180 million this year. The M & A team was started three years ago and now has six people, headed by Lukasz Gebski.
When Citibank takes over Handlowy late this year, there probably will be a division of labor between Handlowy's M & A division and the Citibank people, possibly according to the size of transactions. The Handlowy team will most likely continue to work on local and medium-sized deals, while those valued at $50 million and above are handled by experts at Citigroup's Schroeder Salomon Smith Barney.
