Michał Sołowow
Company: Synthos SA
Position: Owner
Entrepreneur, investor, and owner of Poland's largest private industrial and investment group with the total assets exceeding €7 billion and over 15,000 employees,12,000 of whom are in Poland.
He is a self-made man and one of the pioneers of Polish entrepreneurship during the political transition of the 1980s and 1990s.
During his 38-year career, he has founded and developed numerous companies, completing dozens of domestic and international mergers and acquisitions. Sołowow was one of the first to list a fully private company - Mitex, on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, create a Polish-foreign joint venture in the hotel industry with the Accor Group, and establish a chain of home improvement (DIY) supermarkets (NOMI) and grocery stores (MAX).
In 2019, Sołowow became the first Polish private investor to launch a project to build a fleet of small modular reactors (SMRs) in Europe through Synthos Green Energy (now SGE S.A.). This project is a collaboration with the global nuclear industry leader GE Vernova Hitachi as the technology vendor.
Sołowow’s industrial group comprises more than 30 companies operating in 15 countries across various industries, including manufacturing, nuclear and renewable energy, innovation and modern technologies, biotechnology and medtech, retail, and food and beverages. The group’s companies sell their products and services to over 100 countries worldwide and are Europe's largest producer of expandable polystyrene (EPS) and one of the world's largest producers of synthetic rubber (Synthos). It is also the second-largest producer of ceramic tiles (Cersanit) and the world's largest manufacturer of flooring boards (Barlinek). One in four car tires worldwide is made from synthetic rubber produced by Synthos.
