CMS Poland has recruited nine Dentons banking and finance lawyers for its Warsaw office.

The team, which joined last week (7 May), includes one partner, Michal Mezykowski, who has been appointed as head of the banking and finance practice in Poland.

CMS Warsaw partner Mark Segall, who currently heads up both the Poland and wider central and eastern European (CEE) team, will continue to oversee the regional team.

Mezykowski departs after eight years at Dentons. He joined the firm in 2010 as a partner from legacy Salans, where he had spent eight years as an associate.

Mezykowski is joined by three counsels and five associates from Dentons. The counsels are Martyna Markiewicz, Jakub Podkowa and Jakub Wieczorek.

Małgorzata Surdek, CMS managing partner in Poland, said the firm has hired the team to bolster its financing offering. "Our banking practice traditionally has strong regulatory and restructuring competences, and now we have decided to strengthen the part of the team that specialises in financing…We see a number of synergies between the strengthened banking practice and the real estate, infrastructure and M&A teams."

She added that she hopes the new additions, which take the CEE and Poland banking team to 17 lawyers in total, will broaden the firm's offering for clients in Poland. In particular, she thinks they will now  be able to do more work for clients who are "planning large transactions on the Polish market and developing business on foreign markets through exports and acquisitions".

Markiewicz and Podkowa were also both formerly associates at legacy Salans, which merged with SNR Denton in 2013, to create the firm now known as Dentons.

Meanwhile, Wieczorek trained at Allen & Overy and was a lawyer at Clifford Chance for nearly six years before joining Dentons.

The new team will also include associates Monika Kowara, Kamila Singer, Karolina Zajac, Mateusz Wisniewski and Jakub Przybylek.

Segall had led both the CEE and Poland banking practice for over a year, having succeeded Paul Stallebrass in May 2017.

Last year, CMS UK completed a three-way merger with Nabarro and Olswang in May. The merger created a firm with nearly 2,500 lawyers in the UK, within a global total of more than 4,500 lawyers across 65 offices in 36 countries.

CMS Poland belongs to the CMS McKenna Nabarro Olswang LLP, which also has offices in London, Aberdeen, Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Prague, Bucharest, Sofia, Muscat and Dubai.

In November 2016, Dentons cut UK jobs after a business services consultation prompted by the launch of a new shared services centre in Warsaw.

Other recent moves in the market include Greenberg Traurig's addition to its own Warsaw office with the hire of an 11-lawyer real estate team from Hogan Lovells, including local practice head Jolanta Nowakowska-Zimoch.