Equipped with the right tools and well informed, investors and other participants of the markets operated by the GPW Group build market value and credibility while reinforcing trust of the general public. According to the GPW Group’s CSR strategy, education is the foundation of the general public’s trust in the capital and commodity markets and their institutions. Hence, a key objective of the GPW Group is to foster a culture of investing while raising awareness of the mechanisms of capital and commodity markets in order to encourage Poles to invest their savings and urge companies to raise growth capital on the capital market.

THE GPW FOUNDATION

The Warsaw Stock Exchange and its subsidiaries – the Polish Power Exchange and BondSpot – have for years pursued educational campaigns focused on the capital, commodity and debt markets addressed to school and university students, investors and professionals. To amplify the reach and efficiency of their educational initiatives and to leverage synergies, the GPW Group companies established the GPW Foundation in May 2015. Since inception, all educational activities of the GPW Group have been implemented by the Foundation or under its auspices.

The mission of the GPW Foundation is to develop and adapt the educational offer of the GPW Group including education in financial, commodity and debt markets and broadly understood economics.

The Foundation pursues its mission by organising and implementing school and educational projects for school and university students, investors and professionals active on the financial and commodity markets.

The GPW Foundation’s educational initiatives focus on two areas: education of professionals active on the GPW Group markets (brokers, advisors, exchange members, media) and education of non-professionals for whom the capital market is not a workplace (investors, school and university students).

The educational projects and initiatives implemented by the GPW Foundation in 2015 included:

• Go4Poland – a programme designed to seek talents among Polish students of foreign universities and to encourage them to work with Polish companies and institutions. The programme has engaged 11 partners and 8 institutional ambassadors. A conference entitled “From Individual Development to National Growth” brought together CEOs of the biggest companies in Poland as well as representatives of the Ministry of Development and the Sejm Committee for the Economy and Development. A workshop for 90 programme participants took place on 15-19 December 2015. The programme will continue in 2016.
• School visits to GPW – in mid-2015, the GPW Foundation took over from Instytut Rynku Kapitałowego the responsibility for organising visits of junior and senior high school students to GPW. An online reservation system was put in place where teachers can manage bookings. As part of the project, around 3 thousand students in 85 groups visited GPW in 2015. The Foundation’s online database has registered 70 schools.
• Commodity market training:
• Seminar on “Electricity Futures” organised in partnership with TGE and Thomson Reuters in September 2015 brought together around 150 participants
• Training on “Energy Trading on TGE” organised by request of EDF Polska SA in December 2015.

Other training programmes and educational initiatives implemented by GPW in 2015:

• Capital for Growth – a project implemented by GPW in partnership with Region Marshals, the Central Securities Depository of Poland (KDPW), Bank PKO BP and Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego, addressed to Polish companies and local governments. This series of 16 meetings held in Poland’s biggest regional capitals from May to November 2015 was devoted to the role of the financial markets in raising capital for projects supported by EU funds in order to encourage companies and local governments to raise growth capital on the exchange. The meetings brought together more than 1,200 participants: entrepreneurs, local government officials, non-governmental organisations, universities and the media.
• Futures Masters Competition – an investment competition open from 26 January to 27 February 2015 in partnership with KDPW and 11 brokerage houses to foster education about investing in GPW-listed derivatives and to promote the instruments. 8,441 contestants from 10 cities in Poland took part in the competition.
• Conference “Derivatives: The Technical Perspective” – a conference on the GPW derivatives market and the application of technical analysis to investing in derivatives, mainly addressed to individual investors, held in May 2015. The conference featured a workshop moderated by Polish strategists and analysts. The event brought together 180 participants and 340 online viewers.
• ING Turbo Game – an educational competition organised in partnership with ING Securities, offering virtual investment of cash in exchange-listed ING Turbo certificates, equities and ETF units. The objective of the competition was to educate investors and to promote listed structured products. The competition brought together 2 thousand contestants.
• Elective Lecture Programme – a series of elective lectures on “GPW Listed Financial Instruments” offered in partnership with the Warsaw University of Life Sciences and the Warsaw University of Technology. The programme included 12 lectures on exchange market indicators, listed instruments, as well as the basics of technical analysis. All lectures were attended by approximately 100 students.
• Product training – training offered at the GPW premises and universities across Poland with a focus on financial instruments, mainly derivatives and structured products. 29 training sessions were offered in 2015, each attended by around 90 participants (in total approximately 2,500 participants).
• Capital Creation Academy – regular events held several times per year in Poland’s biggest cities in partnership with the Association of Individual Investors (SII), where experts share expertise on capital markets, listed instruments and techniques of investing. In 2015, the Academy offered two series of sessions, in total 12 training events. The first edition of the project focused on investing in ETPs on GPW. The second edition focused on the commodity market. The total number of participants of the two editions was 713 persons.
• Training series “Three Steps to the Exchange” – a national series of 14 training sessions offered by GPW in partnership with DM PKO BP focusing on the basics of investing in exchange-traded instruments. The series brought together 1,599 participants.
• Exchange School Online Game – a project focused on investing, addressed to senior high school students, available since 2002 in partnership with the Lesław A. Paga Foundation. The Game offers young people a hands-on experience of investing on the exchange, analysing of market conditions, decision-making and team work. It brought together more than 18 thousand participants in 2015.

EXCHANGE SCHOOL

A flagship educational programme arranged by GPW for many years, the Exchange School was reactivated in January 2014. The project includes courses which introduce beginners to investing and cover the following topics: the capital market and the exchange, the rules of investing, company analysis, risk assessment, the psychology of investing. The courses are held regularly in Poland’s biggest cities in partnership with local higher schools and in Warsaw by the Exchange. The Exchange School course materials were updated in June-December 2015 and two training levels were introduced: beginner and intermediate. The project currently involves 6 academic centres and 3 prospective partners. 12 courses were offered in 2015, bringing together 454 participants.

The Exchange School also offers a summer edition in an on-line training format. Webinars organised in the summer of 2015 in partnership with the Association of Individual Investors (SII) and the brokerage houses Noble Securities, BZ WBK, ING, BOŚ, CDM Pekao and mBank brought together 2,019 unique users. The average number of online training participants was 247 persons and the average number of registrations per course was 499.

RESPECT INDEX

The RESPECT Index project is a flagship initiative of the Warsaw Stock Exchange and a part of its educational efforts in support of social responsibility of GPW listed companies and responsible investing in Poland.

The index portfolio includes companies listed on the GPW Main Market which follow the highest standards of corporate governance, disclosures and investor relations taking into account environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors in their business. The companies are audited and the index portfolio is revised once per year in the second half of the year. The index portfolio includes the biggest listed companies participating in the indices WIG20, mWIG40 and sWIG80. The companies are selected in three steps of verification carried out by GPW and the Association of Listed Companies in the areas listed above as well as an audit performed by the project partner since the first edition: Deloitte.

The index requirements take into account the industrial specificity of companies. The survey questionnaire includes questions dedicated to all companies as well as questions for companies which pursue a specific business according to the classification deployed by GPW: Industry, Finance, and Services. The participation of each company in the index is

defined on the same terms as for the other GPW indices, taking into account free-float shares, where the weight of the biggest companies is capped at 25% where the number of index participants is under 20 or 10% otherwise.

The RESPECT Index portfolio included between 16 and 24 companies in the nine editions of the survey, last held in the autumn of 2015. The current index portfolio includes 23 companies. The index has evolved since its inception. The requirements for companies have been steadily raised to increasingly accommodate trends typical of mature capital markets, meet stakeholders’ requirements, and provide a full picture of the reported ESG factors. The ninth edition of the RESPECT Index project made several modifications to the questionnaire used to classify companies:

Social – integrated reports were added to reporting required to meet the RESPECT Index criteria, enabling companies to rely on reporting standards alternative to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI);

Social – diversity at the workplace was added to the issues under review;

Governance – amicable resolution of disputes with stakeholders, including contractors and clients, was added to the survey.

The results of the 2015 survey suggest that the companies participating in the RESPECT Index improve their ESG (environmental, social, governance) performance year after year. The average score of companies in the last three editions of the project increased from 64.08 to 71.01 points, with a maximum of 90 points.

The RESPECT Index performance corroborates the fundamental notion of responsible investing whereby investment in companies managed in a sustainable way which respect the environment and the interests of all stakeholders involves lower risk and generates above-average returns. From the first publication of the index on 19 November 2009 to the end of 2015, the RESPECT Index return rate was 39.2%, compared to a negative return on WIG20 over the same period (-20.2%).

Performance of the RESPECT Index and WIG (normalised)

EDUCATIONAL INITIATIVES ON THE COMMODITY MARKET

The Polish Power Exchange (TGE) also pursues educational initiatives addressed to market participants in order to develop and promote transparent trade in products offered by TGE and to raise the awareness of the benefits of trade on TGE. Such initiatives are addressed both to market participants and TGE members.

In 2015, TGE offered a series of training programmes and examinations for commodity exchange brokers. The series included 12 training sessions and examinations on the Exchange Commodity Market (RTG) and 6 training sessions and examinations on the Financial Instruments Market (RIF). In 2015, TGE continued to work in partnership with universities and organised workshops on the role of energy exchanges and commodity markets. TGE’s flagship initiative is its partnership with the Lesław A. Paga Foundation in the Energy Academy Project designed to create a platform of exchange of expertise between practitioners with long-time experience in the energy industry and beginners who are starting a career in the industry.

In June 2015, TGE in partnership with the Commodity Clearing House (IRGiT) organised the eighth edition of the Trading Forum as a platform for the exchange of opinions and development of new solutions in collaboration with direct participants of the markets operated by TGE.