Abstract

This article synthetically summarizes studies on the legal institution of brokerage (professional) secrecy broken down into such key issues as: legal basis for the duty to observe brokerage secrecy; identification of protected values; what information is covered by secrecy; period of protection (how long secrecy is to be observed); entities protected by secrecy and their disposal rights concerning protected information, including the right to waive protection or disclose information to other persons; who is obliged to observe secrecy; who is entitled to have access to protected information; the extent of being bound by secrecy and duties of entities entitled to have access to protected information (to what extent they are bound by the duty to observe secrecy); criteria for access to protected information; or relations with other secrecies and problems arising in connection with overlapping of protective regimes. It should be stressed that although brokerage (professional) secrecy is not a subject that is well recognized in Polish legal literature or well known in Polish case law, enhanced legal awareness of all participants in trading of financial instruments allows to assume that many interpretational doubts relating to the practice of legal transactions will arice in connection with that secrecy.