About

One of the largest legal teams in Central and Eastern Europe at 201-strong, PKO Bank Polski’s legal team has been led by general counsel Wojciech Jabłoński, who has led a major restructuring and consistent improvement of the team’s abilities since taking over in 2012. Jabłoński is a permanent participant of the Bank’s board and committee meetings and provides corporate governance advice on a strategic level. Deputy general counsel Jacek Jastrzębski describes just some of the team’s work over the past two years: ‘Over the last two years the Bank was deeply involved in the digitalisation of the Polish economy and one of the key elements of this was the integration of the online banking authorisation tools with certain services offered by the governmental authorities or other official bodies. As well as this, we are permanently involved in advising various business lines of the bank related to new regulatory requirements, mostly adopted at EU level – some of the most significant of these being CRR, BRRD, PRIIPS, MIFID 2, GDPR and PSD 2. On top of that, PKO legal is an integral part of the teams working on strategic projects of the Bank and is hands-on involved in handling the Bank’s corporate transactions, that over the last two years included the acquisitions of Raiffeisen’s Polish leasing operations, the fintech company ZenCard and the Polish investment fund business of the KBC group’. Krzysztof Semczuk, head of corporate and investment banking legal, is responsible for coverage of legal matters in the area of corporate and investment banking, and has more than 20 years of experience in the financial sector, having worked mainly for banks but also for brokerage firms. In his current position he is also handling some of the largest restructurings in the market. Agnieszka Zygadło, head of retail banking and bancassurance legal, is regularly advising internal clients on matters related to the implementation of new regulatory requirements and to the digitalisation of the banking business, and also came in for particular praise for her excellent work.