The introduction of the euro currency in 2002, the enlargement of the European Union in 2004 (the accession of Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary) and 2007 (Romania and Bulgaria), the attempts to agree on a response to global warming, the record level of investment transactions in Eastern Europe in 2006, the global financial crisis after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, and the crisis in the countries of the eurozone - these are a few of the last ten years' ten macroeconomic events that have had the biggest impact on the economy and the property market in Europe, according to Colliers International.
To follow this up I have decided to devise a subjective ranking of the most important events of the last few months in Poland. Some readers of the more masculine persuasion will no doubt deny what I am about to write, but I know that deep down they will admit that I am right. We all like gossiping. We are all interested in who does what, how they do it, etc. And if it happens to concern the property market, the titbits are even tastier. The most emotions that have recently been aroused were due to the personnel changes in agencies. Charles Taylor faces the task of replacing one of the icons of the Polish property market: Richard Petersen. He has been the managing director of Cushman & Wakefield in Poland since it set up its Polish operations in 1991. In the meantime, Tomasz Trzósło has taken on the role of the head of Jones Lang LaSalle in Poland. Alan Colquhoun, who left DTZ in 2009 after ten years as Poland managing director, is coming back to the agency. The return to his old stamping ground is connected with the fact that Patrick Decol (the former head of the company), as well as a few leading employees and department heads, have quite unexpectedly (at least as far as I'm concerned) moved over to the competition, i.e. BNP Paribas Real Estate. There has not been such a sudden reshuffling at the top levels of consultancies in this country for a very long time - or perhaps ever. We live in interesting times. It will be interesting to see if and possibly how the shape of the advisory market will change in the next few months and years. How much of it will be dominated by JLL and C&W, for example? In this issue, their new bosses reveal the development strategies that they have embarked upon for their companies.
