Dealmakers Dialogues Warsaw: Poland M&A Headwinds and Horizons in 2025

Jacek Poświata is a senior partner and the Chairman of Bain & Company’s Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region. He has been with Bain since 2012, when he co-founded the firm's Warsaw office.

With over 30 years of experience in strategic consulting, he advises management teams of leading corporations and private equity funds across Poland, Europe, and North America on growth strategy, organizational transformation, and mergers and acquisitions.

He works closely with a broad range of investors – including private equity funds, family offices, and corporate investors – on topics such as commercial due diligence, portfolio value creation, and long-term firm strategy.

Jacek has extensive experience across industries including retail, consumer products, healthcare, industrials, and chemicals. His expertise spans business strategy, M&A, customer strategy and marketing, performance improvement, and organizational effectiveness.

Prior to joining Bain, he was a senior partner and managing director at a leading American consulting firm in Poland. He is also a member of the prestigious Polish Business Roundtable (PRB). Jacek studied at the Warsaw School of Economics and earned an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Magdalena Nasiłowska leads the corporate department at the A&O Shearman Warsaw office. She acts for both public and private companies in connection with mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, and private equity transactions. She also advises Polish companies and investors in commercial and corporate governance-related matters and has a wealth of experience in coordinating projects covering a broad range of integrated services, including post-merger integration, supply chain transformation, and general corporate structuring. In her practice she focuses on tech M&A and defence sector in Poland.

Piotr Chudzik has been Managing Partner at Trigon Investment Banking since 2013.  Piotr has 35 years of experience in investment banking and corporate finance in Poland and Central Europe.  From 1991 he managed investment banking operations of global investment banks such as Nomura, Deutsche Bank, Bankers Trust, NatWest and Hambros Bank in Poland and Central Europe. He advised on mergers & acquisitions, privatisations, project financing, IPOes, equity and debt capital market transactions with total value exceeding EUR 30 billion including such landmark transactions as EUR 3.15bn acquisition of BZ WBK Bank by Banco Santander and USD 6.1bn sale of Polkomtel SA mobile operator by PKN Orlen, PGE, KGHM and Vodafone to Spartan Holdings.   Piotr is graduate of Master of Business Administration programme at University of Western Ontario, London, Canada and has Master of International Economics from Uniwersytet Łódzki in Poland.

Szymon leads the Corporate Development department at Qemetica (formerly known as Ciech), where he oversees M&A, JVs, and other related initiatives. During his tenure, he worked on Qemetica’s landmark $310 million acquisition of PPG’s silica products business, marking the group’s expansion into the United States and the Netherlands. He also launched Qemetica Ventures, an initiative focused on collaboration with startups and minority investments in deep tech companies. Its portfolio includes investments in spin-offs from leading Swiss and British universities, among others.

Łukasz is a Director in the M&A team at PwC Poland. He has over 20 years of experience in M&A advisory working on both sell-side and buy-side projects; advising Polish entrepreneurs, private equity firms as well as Polish and international strategic investors. Łukasz conducted projects in various sectors and was engaged in landmark transactions of PwC Poland M&A in the FMCG sector. Łukasz is a member of the PwC Global Consumer Markets team. Prior to PwC, he worked at Vienna Capital Partners and EY.

Markus is Head of DACH and CEE at Datasite. Since 2017, he is leading the Frankfurt office and is responsible for expanding Datasite’s footprint across the DACH and Central & Eastern European markets.

Prior to joining Datasite, Markus held various roles in the financial industry, including Sales Manager Europe at Trading Technologies and Account Manager at Thomson Reuters. In 2016, he also co-founded the technology start-up Evo Fintech.

Markus holds an Executive MBA from Purdue University (USA) and brings extensive experience at the intersection of technology, finance, and sales.

Lawyer by education, Ewa has specialized in sales and business development for 12 years, working with the major players across multiple industries in the CEE. In her career, she held roles in financial services, consulting, and technology companies. Ewa brought Datasite to Poland in 2021 and in no time established Datasite as a preferred VDR provider in the local M&A market.