Karol Depczyński
Executive Director
Karol has held managerial and executive roles in media, telecoms and infrastructure companies for twenty years. Size of the businesses does not seem to matter, as he goes from CFO roles in large companies to start-ups, where he rolls up his sleeves to get the businesses going.
Karol gained experience in corporate finance and capital market transactions at Elektrim, where he helped Alex restructure the complex capital group and raise financing for subsidiaries in telecom and energy sectors. He then moved to PTC (currently T-Mobile Polska) where he was responsible for long-term financial planning, controlling and investor relations.
In 2005 he joined ITI as CFO of the start-up DTH pay-TV platform 'n' which he developed for over 5 years from initial business plan preparation, through a successful market launch, to EBITDA positive +1 million customers enterprise, sold to TVN and then - after Karol's departure - merged with Canal+.
And now for something completely different, between 2012-2015 Karol was CFO of PKP Polskie Linie Kolejowe, the owner of national rail infrastructure, taking part in a large restructuring program of Polish railways. He put an end to the company's liquidity problems, through multiple effectiveness initiatives, restructuring PLN +400 million receivables from a key customer and introducing a new calculation of cost-based rail access charges. With the state and EU funding not always available for the company's large capex program worth ca. EUR 2 billion annually, he raised EIB and other debt financing to prefinance investment projects.
In the wake of the political shift after the 2015 parliamentary elections, Karol left the state-owned enterprise and soon found himself in start-up mode again. He helped launch Showmax, the Naspers-owned SVOD service in Poland, as its Head of Operations, being responsible inter alia for financial planning and negotiating key partnership deals.