Bank Pekao brings back the bison

Michal Krupinski looks to shake off the legacy of UniCredit with big plans for Poland’s second-largest lender. But will he be given a chance to implement them?

Michal Krupinski, CEO of Bank Pekao

When state-controlled Polish insurer PZU took over Bank Pekao from UniCredit in June last year, one of its first actions was to dispense with the services of the lender’s long-standing and well-regarded Italian chief executive, Luigi Lovaglio. 

Given that the acquisition of the country’s second-largest bank was part of the nationalist Law and Justice Party (PiS) government’s plan to ‘repolonize’ the sector, this came as little surprise to the market. Nor, in some respects, did the choice of his successor. 

Michal Krupinski has been known as PiS’s golden boy for more than a decade, since his appointment at the age of 25 to the post of treasury undersecretary by the then prime minister and current party leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, during the party’s previous spell in power. 

After PiS lost the 2007 general election to liberal rivals Civic Platform, Krupinski put in time at the World Bank in Washington...

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