Taylor Wessing has boosted its Polish banking and finance practice with the hire of a 10-lawyer team from Deloitte Legal.

Led by former Deloitte Legal head of banking and finance Zbigniew Korba and banking and insurance regulatory specialist Łukasz Szymańsk, the group also includes three counsel, four senior associates and one associate.

With the exception of one senior associate, who specialises in real estate and construction, the team will all join Taylor Wessing’s Warsaw banking and finance practice, which will be headed by Korba.

Szymański joined the firm on 1 December with the remaining team members due to arrive over the next two months. Their arrival will boost Taylor Wessing’s Poland office headcount to 30 lawyers out of a total of 50 staff.

CEE managing partner Raimund Cancola said the incoming partners were “renowned in the Polish legal market” with the firm highlighting banking and finance and the real estate sector as areas of strategic focus with ‘increasing growth opportunities in Poland’.

Korba’s practice focuses on the financial and real estate sectors, advising on transactions and regulatory issues. Previous firms include PwC Legal and Salans, now part of Dentons. Szymańs has enjoyed stints at K&L Gates, Wardynski & Partners and Poland's financial services regulator.

Taylor Wessing has an extensive network across Central and Eastern Europe with offices in Bratislava, Brno, Budapest, Kiev, Klagenfurt, Prague and Vienna as well as Warsaw.

Deloitte Legal, which practices in Poland as Deloitte Legal Ostrowski Gizicki i Wspólnicy, is Poland’s 18th-largest law firm by size, according to the 2021 annual ranking by the newspaper Rzeczpospolita, with around 90 lawyers.

Last October, it hired a 12-strong banking team from White & Case including Tomasz Ostrowski, who took up the role of Poland managing partner. 

There have been a series of large team moves in Poland in recent weeks. Last week, Greenberg Traurig hired a seven-strong group of real estate lawyers, including one partner and two senior associates, from Dentons. 

Greenberg, in turn, lost a 10-strong property team to CMS in November. And in September CMS took on a five-strong finance team from Baker McKenzie.