Poland's PKO BP picks ex-central banker Pruski as new CEO

WARSAW (Thomson Financial) - Poland's second-largest lender PKO BP SA named former central bank deputy governor Jerzy Pruski as the new chief executive, it said in a statement.

Pruski, aged 49, left the central bank earlier this year after a much publicised row with central bank's governor Slawomir Skrzypek. Before that, he sat on the bank's monetary policy council from 1998 to 2004 and was a deputy chief executive at small LG Petro Bank throughout the 1990s.
e will succeed Rafal Juszczak who, during his 10 month stint at PKO, transformed the sleepy state-owned lender into an aggressive player on the country's booming mortgage market.

While shares in PKO have lost more than eight percent over the last year, the bank has outperformed its peers thanks to rapidly improving results.

The key task facing Pruski will be to regain PKO's position as the largest bank in Poland after it dropped into second place following a merger of the local units of Italy's UniCredit S.P.A. last year.

He will also have to complete a long-delayed rollout of a single software system and shrink the bank's large workforce, a legacy of its past as leading communist era savings bank for ordinary Poles.

Pruski will take over running the bank on May 20
Source: By Piotr Skolimowski, hemscott.com