Management Board.

He has spent his working life between Europe, the Middle East and Asia; he returned to build Danske Gas from the ground up in Warsaw – a multi-energy operator holding URE licences. The company imports LPG, LNG, diesel and biofuels and trades in electricity; it buys on the scale of full seaborne cargoes and sells in Poland and across European Union markets. The people who started with him are with him to this day – only in larger roles.

He comes out of international legal practice. For nearly a decade he led cross-border transactions in the energy sector and rose to partner; he advised more than a dozen of the world's leading oil and gas groups. He then owned a trading firm in energy commodities and, in recent years, has been the founder and shareholder of companies in many countries, in Europe and beyond. For years now he has acted as an investor; for private purposes he established a family holding company, and he allocates capital on a horizon of decades – in fintech, among other fields.

A lawyer by training and an MBA graduate, he is currently taking part in the Advanced Management Program. He honed his trader's craft in London. As a sponsor, he attends the principal energy summits and conferences from Europe to the Middle East and Africa, as well as the economic forums of Central and East Asia. The Middle East – its markets, its art and its history – he knows at first hand.

Outside business, he values what calls for composure, detachment and effort. Most of all, the sea: long voyages, technical diving in distant waters, expeditions from the tropics to waters beyond the Arctic Circle. His one regret is that he discovered that world so late. On the race track he trains technique, not speed; in aviation it is the engineering that draws him, not the controls.

A collector of post-war Polish painting; the owner of one of the most interesting collections of writing instruments in Europe; a theatre producer. Patronage he regards as a duty of capital: through his family foundation he supports museums, opera and theatre – from Montserrat Abbey to Teatr Nowe Formy. He reads – and writes.

He intends, in time, to devote a substantial part of what he is building to social causes.