News

Review of Implementation of GPW2022 Strategy

PRESS RELEASE

• GPW has become a full member of the World Federation of Exchanges
• The GPW Group has presented a summary of implementation of its Strategy #GPW2022 in 2018-2022

A conference dedicated to a review of the implementation of GPW’s Strategy in 2018-2022 has been held at the Centrum Giełdowe building on 20 June 2022. Marek Dietl, President of the Management Board of the Warsaw Stock Exchange, presented the key activities of the GPW Group, its financial results and future plans. The event was attended by representatives of the World Federation of Exchanges, the Ministry of State Assets, the Ministry of Finance, the Polish Financial Supervision Authority, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and others.

The Board of Directors of the World Federation of Exchanges (WFE) has approved GPW’s application for full membership of the organisation, said special guest Bill Speth, WFE Senior Adviser. GPW may now join working groups of technical experts in various fields of the exchange operator community.

Mr Dietl stressed GPW’s robust financial performance underpinned by the implementation of the strategy, as well as Poland’s promotion by FTSE Russell to Developed Market in September 2018.

“Our financial performance in the past five years has been very successful. Our average profitability has increased by 38 percent over that period. The key milestone of the period was GPW’s promotion to Developed Market in September 2018,” said Mr Dietl at the conference.

The Polish capital market was acknowledged among others due to a wide choice of listed shares and their high liquidity, efficiency and safety of trading and post-trade services, very few restrictions imposed on foreign investors, as well as broad unlimited access to professional brokers.

GPW’s CEO discussed the most important measures taken by GPW in recent years and stressed one of the key objectives of the Group’s strategy: to diversify its revenue mix. The strategic initiatives have been designed to strengthen the international position of the GPW Group.

“We actively sought growth opportunities abroad, among others by negotiating the terms for the acquisition of the Armenia Securities Exchange. Other key areas of focus include ESG factors (Environmental, Social, and Governance) as well as passive investing: two of the most prominent trends in the global capital markets. We have been active in the debt market, where our flagship initiative is the All2All project opening access to trading in Treasury bonds for all market participants, not just banks. We have been developing the derivatives market and the commodities market, and have entered a new segment: agricultural products; we plan to invest heavily in the development of financial instruments for the agricultural market,” said Mr Dietl. He also enumerated recent initiatives in the area of data and technology. “It is now the driving force of the global capital markets, which is why we have established projects including GPW Data and TCL Tool, and in particular our new trading system, the Warsaw Automated Trading System (WATS). We are working on WATS not only to meet our needs but also with a view to its worldwide commercialisation. We are also proud to have received authorisation of the Polish Financial Supervision Authority to launch the foreign stock market Global Connect, which should happen within the next two months,” said Mr Dietl.

Mr Dietl’s guests on the panel “#GPW2022 Strategy: Where Are We Now?”, which followed the presentation, included Bill Speth, World Federation of Exchanges; Alexander Saveliev, Head of Specialised Financial Services and Trade Finance, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development; Katarzyna Przewalska, Director of the Financial Market Development Department, Ministry of Finance; and Franek Hutten-Czapski, Managing Director and Partner, BCG Poland.

The following part of the conference featured a detailed presentation of the steps of implementation of selected strategic initiatives. Michał Piątek, Director of GPW’s Strategy and Research Department, opened the discussion and handed the floor to Rafał Kamecki, President of Artinfo.pl, who outlined the GPW Private Market project as a step in building a friendly ecosystem on the Polish capital market.

“Tokenisation of works of art and the resulting democratisation of access to a new class of assets, breaking down the market entry barrier, a significant increase in liquidity compared to the current model of trading in works of art, and above all a significantly higher transparency of the art market: these are the key objectives of the project,” said Mr Kamecki.

Paweł Gruza, Vice-President for Foreign Assets, KGHM, discussed the PCOL project (Polish Digital Logistics Operator). Its objectives include accelerated terms of payment, access to a larger market, elimination of unfair competition, ease of access to SSP orders, fair standards of service provision, certainty of payment, and protection of the market against takeover by foreign intermediaries.

Mariusz Kołodziejski, Technical Director, TV PULS, introduced the Telemetry Operator platform (TeO). TeO is a new solution to be developed under a grant from the National Centre for Research and Development (NCBiR). It will be used for profiling users of TV sets and for selling and displaying targeted advertisements on linear television.

The event closed with a presentation of test results of the Warsaw Automated Trading System (WATS) by Piotr Kociński, PhD, Head of Research and Development of the new trading platform project. The conference participants were introduced to WATS functionalities. The project outcomes address the needs of the market and the Polish capital market development strategy by enabling optimisation of operating costs and trading costs on the secondary and primary market. The system will be implemented in GPW and its subsidiaries (process innovation) to replace the legacy trading systems.

The Strategy #GPW2022 is the GPW Management Board’s response to the challenges posed by capital market participants; it is also a result of transformation in GPW’s environment; as well as expression of the GPW Management Board’s commitment to the advancement of the local capital and commodity markets. The GPW Group continues to focus on technological development and implementation of innovative solutions which diversify the group’s revenues.

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The Warsaw Stock Exchange Group (GPW Group) operates trading platforms for shares, Treasury and corporate bonds, derivatives, electricity and gas, and provides indices and benchmarks including WIBOR and WIBID. The index agent FTSE Russell classifies the Polish capital market as a Developed Market since 2018. The markets operated by the GPW Group are the biggest in Central and Eastern Europe. For more information, visit www.gpw.p