Safe Bank

The aim of this paper is to present an outline of issues relating to the new unified legal regime
of crowdfunding services. The EU legislator adopts the concept of the single set of authorisation requirements for crowdfunding services providers. The purpose of the new legal regime is to address the existing obstacles and to ensure the uniform qualification of business models. The ECSP Regulation constitutes an essential step towards the unification of supervision aspects. New uniform regulations increase the availability external sources of finance for small and medium-sized enterprises, alternative to bank credits.

The growing issuance of green capital instruments such as subordinated Tier 2 and AT1 CoCo bonds raises the question of the underlying green assets. The careful examination of allocation reports and analysis of credit risk with the greening of the loan portfolio is thus required. So far, the existing taxonomies of banks’ loan portfolios are not designed to present ESG exposures. Thus the investors lack comparable data on banks’ loan books to assess their greenness. This is going to change in the years to come with the adoption of new EU rules and regulations on sustainability - related disclosures.

The essential purpose of the paper is to analyse the legal conditions determining the system of cybersecurity of the financial market in Poland. The authors have performed a dogmatical legal analysis of provisions of the Polish and, partly, EU legislation and then discussed the implementation of the provisions in the financial sector. The analysis covers the role and position of the KNF Board as an authority competent for cybersecurity for the banking sector and the infrastructure of financial markets. The paper also presents a catalogue of the institution’s tasks and activities that have been undertaken to perform the tasks properly. The paper includes an in-depth analysis of recommendations and guidelines adopted by the KNF Board in the area of cybersecurity, and points their specific legal nature. The paper also explores the process of establishing the CSIRT KNF team and discusses its special role in building cyber resilience of the Polish cybersecurity system. Special emphasis is placed on the important role of financial education, in particular the need to run awareness-raising and educational campaigns regarding cybersecurity. The conclusions include the authors’ free thoughts on the further development of cyber threats and a presentation of ideas on how to prevent them.

The article discusses the issue of the general public interest clause in the context of resolution. The considerations are aimed at showing the essence of the public interest clause, its sources and functions in public and legal transactions, as well as the premises for its application in the resolution procedure. The article presents not only the concept of the public interest in Polish and EU law, but also its role in the functioning of the financial market. Being the first study in the Polish legal literature on the premises for initiating compulsory restructuring, the article attempts to present the premises for interpreting the public interest clause in compulsory restructuring.

The article relates to structures of transactions conducted within the framework of resolution regime that took place within  the Polish banking sector. The authors analyse how the objectives of resolution and the valuations made at the request of the Bank Guarantee Fund determine the structure of transactions executed under the resolution regime. They also assesses the effectiveness of the resolution instruments and discusses how the jurisprudence of administrative courts accurately identifies the role of the resolution authority and the importance of the objectives and criteria of resolution proceedings.

The article briefly outlines the impact of the resolution regime on the sphere of civil procedural law. The study concerns the effects on judicial proceedings (change of party, stay of proceedings) as well as on preservation and enforcement proceedings, and also the issues related to evidences and cross-border consequences of resolution.

The article discusses the legal nature of fines imposed by the Bank Guarantee Fund. Since 2016, the Bank Guarantee Fund may impose fines on members of the bodies of certain financial institutions, including banks and credit unions, due to the failure of these entities to fulfil their reporting and information obligations related to the resolution process. The provisions of the Bank Guarantee Fund  lack a comprehensive regulation on the principles of imposing fines. The provisions of the BFG Act are not uniform as regards the rules of imposing penalties. In art. 79 of the BFG Act, the criteria for measuring the penalty were not specified, while these criteria were specified in Art. 95 of the Act of June 10, 2016 on the Bank Guarantee Fund, the deposit guarantee system and resolution (i.e. Journal of Laws of 2022, item 793). The fines imposed by BFG should be considered as the administrative sanctions due to the purpose of their imposition. The grounds for imposing fines by the Fund should be sought in the Directives of the European Parliament, which have been implemented into the Polish legal system.

This study is devoted to the assessment of the definition of a bank adopted in the Polish Banking Act. The deconstruction of the statutory definition of a bank was performed by means of legal, logical and semantic critical analysis, , followed by a description and legal evaluation of the elements of this definition distinguished in this way. The purpose of this activity was to identify and demonstrate the fundamental flaws, errors and inaccuracies of the discussed definition, of a logical, legislative and - more broadly - legal nature, as well as to indicate possible alternative solutions.

Transactions concerning the sale of an organized part of the TFI enterprise are rarely found on the Polish market. In practice, the disposal of such entities in the financial sector takes place through mergers or acquisitions of shares. The provisions of the Act on Investment Funds does not even indirectly address the sale or acquisition of a TFI enterprise. The concept of a TFI enterprise does not differ fundamentally from the definition known in the civil law developed on the basis of Article 55(1) of the Civil Code. Specificity of TFI's activity is associated with equipping it with specific attributes, such as the management of investment funds. This specificity of the components of each company's enterprise means that the acquisition of the TFI enterprise or its part involving the management of investment funds means that the acquiring entity can only be another investment fund company enterprise. The current Investment Funds Act regulations do not directly regulate the admissibility of the transfer of information covered by professional secrecy in the event of the sale of part of the TFI enterprise - thus causing certain legal complications. De lege lata, this issue cannot be solved, what makes necessary for the legislator to intervene to eliminate the identified legal loophole.

The forecasts and opinions presented below constitute a quantitative and qualitative consensus from the answers to our questions, which were received by prominent Polish economists by June 3, 2022.
Quantitative forecasts were sent by 12 experts, and 39 experts presented their opinions on
• the most important threats to the economic situation in Poland,
• the greatest threats to the stability of the financial system and the credibility of PLN by 2024
• recommended actions in the area of ​​economic policy.