Introduction

1. The recent history of the Polish capital market begins in the 1990s, when new regulations on financial institutions and instruments were adopted. That meant that in 1991 the Polish stock exchange was reopened, after an absence of over fifty years.

2. In 2005, a year after Poland's accession to the European Union, new regulations on the capital market were introduced by three pieces of legislation:

1. (i) The Act on Public Offering, Conditions Governing the Introduction of Financial Instruments to Organised Trading, and Public Companies;

2. (ii) The Act on Trading in Financial Instruments;

3. (iii) The Act on Capital Market Supervision.

3. In 2006, the above Acts were amended by the Act on Financial Market Supervision. All of those Acts fully adapt Polish legislation to the European Union law on capital markets, and in many instances by direct implementation, or reference, to the European Union directives and regulations.

4. In the Polish legal system, the Prospectus Directive and Prospectus Regulation were implemented into the Act on Public Offering, Conditions Governing the Introduction of Financial Instruments to Organised Trading, and Public Companies, and the following information is based mainly on those provisions.

Competent authority

5. On 19 September 2006, with the entry into force of the Act of 21 July 2006 on supervision of the financial market, the new administrative authority, the Financial Supervision Commission (‘Commission’), commenced its activities.