Anna Szczodra-Kowalczyk – GC Powerlist
GC Powerlist Logo
Central and Eastern Europe 2017

Energy and utilities

Anna Szczodra-Kowalczyk

Legal director | EDF Polska

Download

Central and Eastern Europe 2017

legal500.com/gc-powerlist/

Recommended Individual

Anna Szczodra-Kowalczyk

Legal director | EDF Polska

About

Anna Szczodra-Kowalczyk has a reputation within the in-house market as a ‘very capable general counsel who has deep expertise of the market’ and is a ‘reliable, operative and very trustworthy lawyer’ according to nominating sources. She is also considered to be ‘very precise in terms of expressing her requirements from outside counsel but also very fair in judgment, goal-oriented and very skilful in handling very large processes’. Managing a team in an extremely efficient way, Szczodra-Kowalczyk is comfortable managing and communicating with not only in-house and external legal staff but with technical and other business teams. Working within an environment filled with very complex innovative regulatory issues which require insight into the technical aspects of the energy business can be challenging for most in-house lawyers. But as another nominator says: ‘[Szczodra-Kowalczyk] has exceptional ability to facilitate such cooperation and to translate complex legal issues into the reality of business operations. I have been working with her on very demanding environmental regulatory issues and it has always been a pleasure to cooperate with her in searching for business oriented solutions’. A trusted business adviser, she is known to have steered EDF through a ‘difficult period of divestment’ by EDF and on the acquisition by state treasury-controlled Polska Grupa Energetyczna. In addition she is capable of dealing with the new regulatory regime that posed ‘many difficult legal implications’. An in-house lawyer comfortable with senior business management, she cooperates ‘very closely’ with the management board of the company and she is member of the Board of Directors, where she has the opportunity to ‘have [a] real impact on the firm’s strategy’. Szczodra-Kowalczyk recently assisted on a ‘complex and complicated’ infrastructural project and in doing so was ‘in charge of the significant organisational changes within the company structure’, building a ‘competent and very efficient team of lawyers within the EDF’s group in Poland’. One of her nominators glowingly informs us that, ‘her legal knowledge is extensive, and constantly being widened, while an ability of perspective thinking is also her advantage. Her characteristic features are creativity and an ability to sense market trends. Thanks to her knowledge, entrepreneurship and attitude, she implements the highest standards of legal services’.

Related Powerlists