Overview
Powszechna Kasa Oszczędności Bank Polski Spółka Akcyjna (, also known as PKO Bank Polski S.A., PKO BP S.A.) is a Polish multinational banking and financial services company headquartered in Warsaw, Poland. It is among the largest financial institutions in Poland, and is also one of the largest financial groups in Central and Eastern Europe, with 1,145 branches located in Poland and abroad and a market capitalization of PLN 52 billion (13.8 billion USD equivalent) as of 2018.
It provides services to both individual and business clients; the core business activity of PKO Bank Polski being retail banking. The full Polish name roughly translates to "General Savings Bank", popularly, only the acronym "PKO" is used by clients.
History
On 7 February 1919, by the order of the Head of State Józef Piłsudski, the Postal Savings Bank was created. Its first director was appointed on 28 December 1919, Hubert Linde [pl]. For many years during the Second Polish Republic, Henryk Gruber was the president of the PKO. With time, a bank's head office was established in Warsaw with headquarters at ul. Świętokrzyska 31/33 and the first local branches: in Kraków, Lwów, Łódź, Poznań and Katowice. The first goal of the PKO was to introduce the Polish zloty into circulation instead of the Polish mark (as a derivative of the German mark). From 1920, the bank had a legal personality as a state institution. The employees of the funds were associated in the Association of Postal Savers Workers, which had their own wheels at larger branches, e.g. in Warsaw, in Łódź.
During the German occupation of Poland, in the Second World War, Bank Polski operated under German management.
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