This report provides an overview of Poland’s capital market, analyzing market trends through September 2013 and global and local outlook through 2014, including anticipated IPOs. The report also offers detailed information on market players including pension funds, mutual funds, foreign investors, and major blue-chips.

Poland’s capital market is the largest and the most developed in the region of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Its share in equities trading in CEE reached a record high of 65% in June 2013, while its share in market capitalization reached 47%, exceeding the combined market capitalization of the stock exchanges in Vienna, Prague, Budapest, and Ljubljana. Thanks to the government’s long-term efforts and consistent policy, the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) has turned into a destination of choice for initial public offerings (IPOs) for companies from the CEE region and the former Soviet countries.

Poland’s capital market provides companies with access to a large number of institutional investors, both foreign and domestic. Moreover, the country has a wide base of well-educated individual investors. The Polish capital market has become a hub for big institutional investors outside the region targeting equity investments in CEE. Among the reasons for Poland’s attractiveness to investors is the government’s privatization policy, under which it sells stakes of big and profitable state-owned companies through the bourse, providing liquidity and drawing the attention of large institutional investors. Most of the companies with the highest market capitalization on the WSE are partly state-owned. On the other hand, Poland’s economy has shown resilience during the global financial crisis and also during the Eurozone debt crisis, as the country was among the few European countries that have not fallen into recession.

Key Points:

• Although still avoiding recession, Poland’s economy deteriorated sharply in 2012, hit by the escalation of the Eurozone crisis.

• The slowdown deepened at the beginning of 2013 and Poland’s GDP growth slowed to a record low of 0.5% in Q1, before improving to 0.8% in Q2. A further gradual improvement is expected in the coming quarters.

• Polish stock prices followed the global trends on equities markets, with a sharp drop in 2009, followed by a recovery in 2011. However, while developed markets recorded a strong recovery in 2012 and 2013, Poland, like other emerging markets, has lagged behind.

• The Polish government’s pension reform has also contributed to increased uncertainty, as it targets to reduce significantly the role of private pension funds, which are one of the main drivers of domestic capital markets.

• Despite those negative trends, which made investors more cautious and reduced IPO activity, the Polish financial market still remains the most liquid and most attractive in the CEE region.