WARSAW, Sept 27 (Reuters) – Polish companies are buying into foreign markets long dominated by Western multinationals, driven by growth at home and a hunger to prove they are no longer Europe’s poor relations.
Twenty-four years after Communist rule ended in Poland, its companies now have the scale, knowledge and self-belief to expand abroad, chief executives and government officials said at a Reuters Eastern Europe Investment Summit this week.
“We are building our economic power as a country,” said Zbigniew Jagiello, chief executive of PKO BP, Poland’s biggest bank. “I hope that … before 2025 we’ll see a Polish company which will be a multinational, known worldwide.”
Two or three years ago Polish firms had almost no significant presence abroad. Executives from Canadian firm Quadra FNX recalled that when Polish copper miner KGHM approached them about a takeover, they had never heard of the Polish firm and doubted they were serious. Since then, there has been a run of foreign acquisitions, and there are more on the way.
The Warsaw stock exchange, which had the most new listings in Europe last year, is in talks to merge with its smaller regional rival in Vienna. Polish insurer PZU is trying to complete a deal to buy firms in Croatia and Slovenia.
Asseco, a software maker, has operations in Israel, the United States, Japan and most European countries and says it plans to list on the Nasdaq, though it would not say when.
Inglot, a privately owned cosmetics firm set up 25 years ago by Polish chemist Wojtek Inglot, has stores in dozens of the world’s swankiest shopping malls, including outlets in London, Paris, New York and Milan.
Polish bus maker Solaris says it is now the third-largest supplier of buses in Germany, which in turn opens opportunities for other Polish businesses; PKO BP has just established a leasing operation in Gothenburg, Sweden, to support Solaris, which is one of the bank’s clients.
After persuading the sceptical Canadian mining executives it was serious, KGHM completed its $2.96 billion acquisition of Quadra last year, the biggest-ever deal by a Polish firm.
“KGHM is becoming a global firm,” Deputy Treasury Minister Pawel Tamborski, who oversees the state’s 31.8 percent stake in the firm, told Reuters. He said he wanted it eventually to buy more assets, provided it chooses carefully.
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