About

The legal department at BGŻ BNP Paribas, the Poland based branch of the international banking group, consists of 60 people (40 lawyers and 20 full-time equivalents) and renders legal support to the bank’s cross-country activities. Led by BNP’s country legal head in Poland and managing director of legal line Iwona Gajek, the team’s remaining senior leadership consists of Marek Małecki – director of the corporate legal counselling services bureau, Sabina Blitek – director of the retail legal counselling services bureau and Tomasz Strubel – CIB legal services bureau. Following the 2015 introduction of an IT system within the legal department to service Bank BGŻ BNP Paribas’ extensive network consisting of 500 bank branches, in 2018 the team took the next step and introduced a comprehensive IT system for all bureaus in the legal department. ‘This new system is easier and more user-friendly for internal customers and lawyers. In addition to a possibility of sending motions for legal opinions and providing answers, it also contains an extended knowledge database module. It comprises opinions, training materials, Q&A and also weekly information about changes to provisions of law’, Gajek articulates. ‘The system also includes a module with a database of court and administrative proceedings to which the Bank is a party. Each module has a reporting option in various dimensions, which will greatly facilitate management and allocation of costs to appropriate units of the bank’. Since Autumn 2017 Gajek has participated in all stages of the demerger process of the core bank of Raiffeisen Bank Polska SA as a result of a division of that bank, where she impressed with her work on the due diligence process, negotiation of the transaction agreement and the current final preparations for the demerger which is scheduled for Q4 2018. Gajek’s team has experience of implementing a plethora of similar projects including strategic mergers with Rabobank Polska, BNP Paribas and Sygma Bank Polska. Agnieszka Laskowska and Sabina Blitek both receive praise for their contributions – Laskowska for contributions to technological innovations and Blitek for taking care for the bank’s customer’s interest, in difficult conditions.