February Edition 2021

17 Digital health is growing in importance to digitalization and are eager to use innovative financial services based on remote electronic channels, mainly over the Internet and via mobile devices. Futhermore, there are more and more business incubators and accelerators in Poland. Seed capital funds and venture capital funds are created and enter the Polish market. This is the reason why dynamically growing start-ups are more likely to obtain funding for their growth.” The cross-border interest in fintech is strong In September 2020, Ozóg Tomczykowski acted for Code and Pepper sp. z o. o., a Polish IT company specializing in IT solutions for the fintech sector, in transferring a a team of IT experts, developers and engineers to Smart Pension Ltd., one of the largest British providers of employee pension schemes. The energy sector is also key. With climate change at the forefront of many political agendas, major energy player, PGE Group announced its plans to invest €17bn in renewable energy sources by 2030. Penteris advised PGNiG Upstream Norway AS and PGNiG S.A. on the Baltic Pipe project, a €2.1 Billion strategic cross-border investment building infrastructure to transfer natural gas from Norway through Denmark to Poland. SK&S too advised on a raft of renewable energy projects, supporting IB Vogt in an M&A transaction covering 7 PV solar projects with aggregate capacity of 100 MW, advising Berndt won Wieding on the sale of four marine wind farm projects in Poland, with an aggregate power generating capacity over 1.5 GW, as well as the development of offshore wind farm projects in the Polish Exclusive Economic Zone on the Baltic Sea. In 2020, commercial property investment activity hit €2.92 Billion across Poland in H1 2020, up by 5% on the same period in 2019. “The Polish real estate market is very promising as one of the pillars of Polish economy and one of the engines of its growth,” adds Uss. “We are the largest office market in the CEE and we rank as 8th largest market in warehouse space supply in Europe. It is the warehouse space sector that has proved most resilient to the changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Increased consumer activity in online stores and the increase in frequency of courier services used has caused a strong surge in demand for warehouse space, especially in the short term.”