Changing places

EWA ANDRZEJEWSKA

Aforeign investor enters the Russian market with a lot of money but little experience; when exiting Russia they have a lot of experience but little capital. This aphorism was related by Bartosz Puzdrowski at a presentation of Polnord's plans for the next few years attended by a select group of journalists. The Warsaw-listed developer has recently had a change of guard at the very top. Wojciech Ciurzyński, the head of the company, has left after more than three years. It was the new president of the board who came out with the remark when asked about the company's expansion into Poland's neighbouring market, while at the same time assuring us that Polnord had gone east with a solid knowledge  base and the necessary funds. Armed with these Mr Puzdrowski is now expecting a healthy return on the investment and is not ruling out further projects being carried out on Russian soil in the future.
There have been more personnel reshuffles in the industry, as can be seen by glancing at the ever growing Eurojobs section. Things seem to have become more fluid in the new year, with nothing but changes, changes, changes ahead of us, as is also the case for another company listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange - Alterco. For a while now the company formerly known as Śrubex has been releasing reports every few days, the majority of which were entitled 'Conclusion of a Significant Contract'. Intrigued by such feverish activity, we took a closer look at the company and the result was an article on Alterco joining forces with the Irish Investment Group (IGI) and Swedish developer  Reinhold, hoping to benefit from what is fashionably termed 'the synergy effect'. This particularly applies to capital acquisitions for new projects and the method of acquiring funds for investment. For example, it is easier to obtain a loan for the extension of a shopping centre than for a new facility. However, the experts stress that we should not overestimate the influence of this factor in the growing popularity of such projects. In their opinion, the trend is more a consequence of the difficulties in finding attractive land and the growing competition on the market - a trend that has become more and more prevalent: just a few years ago extensions constituted a small percentage of developers' activities, whereas nowadays they amount to over 20 pct, which you can read about in more detail in the feature article of this issue.