About

The journey of Idea Getin Leasing’s legal team started in 2013 when a small legal team was formed at VB Leasing Polska – a medium-sized leasing company belonging to the Austrian-German financial holding company. Currently, the department represents a large-scale in-house legal operation which provides support to the leader of the Polish enterprise finance sector (particularly in the field of transport) employing 1,000 people and recording an annual sales figure of approximately $2bn. To achieve this expansion, the legal team participated in a string of corporate transactions, namely the sales process of VB Leasing to Idea Leasing, the merger between VB Leasing Polska and Idea Leasing, the acquisition of a majority stake and subsequently 100% stake in Getin Leasing and finally the merger of Idea Leasing and Getin Leasing 2017. In the same period, the team successfully implemented GDPR and numerous innovative legal and business solutions. ‘We assisted in obtaining finance from the European Investment Bank, conducted difficult negotiations regarding the securitisation of a receivables portfolio with European institutions and banks, and we were supporting corporate bond issues programmes. At that time, there were major changes in the legal and business environment, but above all we faced the emotions and challenges of the merger’, says legal and compliance head Andrzej Klimek. ‘I have full conviction that we have all learned a lot, but above all, we have done our job very well,’ Klimek continues. ‘The best proof of this is not only the place where our company is but also the fact that the core of the team are still the same excellent lawyers who joined us during the mergers. We are a well-coordinated team of professionals with unique experience both in the area of our core business, that is, financing enterprises as well as in the area of more complex M&A transactions. Thanks to this combination on legal level and acquisitions and organic growth in business area, our company has become a leader in the corporate finance sector, and a significant part of the trucks traveling across European roads are vehicles financed by our company’. It is, indeed, hard to imagine continuing success for Idea Getin Leasing without the company’s ‘flexible and hardworking’ team, whose significant contributions to operational fluidity and transactional achievements have been outlined by several sources.