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When the richest man in Jap Europe died in a helicopter crash, hardly anybody knew his spouse’s title.
Practically three years later, that’s now not the case. Renata Kellnerova is now synonymous with the household enterprise — a Prague-based telecommunications, media, monetary companies and e-commerce empire that employs 61,000 individuals and operates in 25 nations.
Within the area, PPF is probably best-known because the proprietor of personal TV stations in six nations throughout Jap Europe, and of one of many Czech Republic’s largest cellphone corporations.
With $43 billion in property, PPF has emerged as one of many foremost winners of the Czech Republic’s post-communist transition, successful that Kellnerova’s late husband Petr Kellner leveraged by increasing into the fast-growing markets of Russia and China. However with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine upending geopolitics and enterprise, many corporations, together with PPF, at the moment are prioritizing progress nearer to dwelling.
In an e-mail trade with Bloomberg Information — her first public feedback to media since taking up PPF — Kellnerova recounted the difficult interval she spent familiarizing herself with the corporate’s complicated operations after the sudden demise of her husband.
“The primary precedence was to safe the soundness of PPF, after which begin growing the enterprise once more,” she mentioned. “I spotted that PPF is private for me and that my job is to arrange our youngsters in order that they’ll have the opportunity of taking management of the group someday themselves.”
Since assuming management, the 56-year-old has put her imprint on the corporate. She’s overseen a serious transfer away from Asia — as soon as a key supply of earnings — and has shifted consideration again to western markets. She’s chosen a brand new chief govt officer and parted methods with a few of her late husband’s shut allies. She introduced the corporate below full household possession by shopping for out two minority shareholders, then named herself and her three daughters to the board of a brand new holding firm housing all of their property.
Now the area’s wealthiest lady, along with her household’s internet price estimated to be round $11.8 billion, in accordance with the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, Kellnerova has been dedicating increasingly time to creating key funding selections. She cites her shut cooperation with PPF CEO Jiri Smejc, one in every of Kellner’s former funding companions, as central to her strategy.
“If the state of affairs requires it, we’re in a position to make selections about offers in only one weekend,” she mentioned. “We pleasure ourselves at PPF on being very versatile in reacting to funding alternatives.”
Beneath Kellnerova, PPF has finalized a number of giant transactions, together with agreeing to a €2.15 billion sale of a controlling stake in telecommunication operations throughout Jap and Central Europe to Abu Dhabi’s Emirates Telecommunications Group Co. The corporate’s client finance division, House Credit score Group BV, additionally agreed in 2022 to promote its Philippine and Indonesian companies in offers price about €615 million ($669 million).
This helped enhance PPF’s profitability to pre-pandemic ranges, with a first-half internet earnings of €709 million in 2023. That’s in contrast with a €406 million loss the yr prior, largely attributable to a expensive withdrawal from Russia.
Whereas there isn’t a actual timeline but for the whole exit from Asia, “the core focus of our enterprise has been shifting west prior to now three years,” Kellnerova mentioned.
With further money readily available and better rates of interest weighing on valuations of privately-owned and publicly traded property, PPF is scanning Europe for brand spanking new acquisition targets. Its largest buy but has been taking a stake in InPost SA, a Polish e-commerce firm that operates self-service supply lockers, and constructing a stake in German broadcaster ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE.
Like her late husband, Kellnerova retains a low public profile and intently guards her household’s privateness. She wouldn’t disclose particular funding targets that her firm has or is likely to be watching. PPF plans to take care of its 4 major funding pillars – monetary companies, telecommunications, media and e-commerce — however, she famous, “that doesn’t rule out smaller opportunistic investments.”
As a result of the group isn’t a typical funding fund with an outlined horizon for holding onto its property, “we will be affected person,” she mentioned. “That’s why short-term returns aren’t the first parameter once we are contemplating an funding alternative.”
PPF, now an intricate community of corporations, started its ascent shortly after the autumn of communism. Kellner based the corporate within the early Nineteen Nineties, when what was then Czechoslovakia began promoting state property by a program that issued vouchers which individuals might both trade for shares in corporations or place in funds.
In 1991, Kellner arrange a fund to amass stakes in 202 corporations. It ended up dealing with the sixth-biggest batch of property out there on the time, in accordance with the agency, which then grew to become generally known as PPF Group. Over time, PPF constructed a 20% stake in Ceska Pojistovna, the nation’s largest insurer, creating the muse of Kellner’s wealth. He cashed out in 2013, promoting the insurance coverage property to Italy’s Generali in a $3.3 billion deal.
As Kellner constructed up his empire, his spouse was occupied with the Kellner Household Basis, one of many Czech Republic’s first philanthropic organizations, which has donated almost 2 billion koruna ($89 million) to social initiatives and scholarships. Kellnerova brings this angle to her new perch, describing PPF as having “social duty that reaches past the sphere of enterprise.”
Alongside PPF, the post-communist gross sales of state property gave rise to a handful of different super-rich Czech households, together with property magnate Radovan Vitek, one in every of Europe’s largest real-estate buyers, and vitality tycoon Pavel Tykac. Firms owned by billionaires residing within the Czech Republic now make use of tens of 1000’s of employees throughout the continent and have performed a vital function within the area’s economies.
On the similar time, they’ve drawn scrutiny. In an interview late final yr, former Czech President Milos Zeman criticized the privatization course of for creating a pointy wealth hole within the former communist nation. Zeman was nonetheless a serious backer of Kellner, and even awarded him the best state honor after the tycoon was killed in a helicopter crash throughout a visit to Alaska.
“I actually valued Petr Kellner, we labored nicely collectively,” mentioned Zeman.
PPF additionally got here below hearth from the native investor neighborhood when it moved to drag the nation’s largest traded cellphone firm from the Prague inventory trade, lowering its market capitalization however giving the group full management. The method was finalized in 2022.
Whereas most shut associates and former staff have saved quiet about PPF’s new management, one in every of PPF’s former minority homeowners, Ladislav Bartonicek, shared his view in an interview with the nation’s largest enterprise day by day newspaper, Hospodarske Noviny, in September.
“The duty for Renata, who may be very actively concerned, and for the second era, is totally different,” he informed the newspaper. “It’s now not a one-man firm — in a great way. The shareholders will probably be extra conservative. It’s a query of who on the household facet would be the most concerned sooner or later.”
Kellnerova’s former and present enterprise companions declined to be interviewed for this story. Of her three daughters, the one one with a public profile is Anna, a 27-year-old show-jumping rider who competed within the 2020 Summer season Olympics in Tokyo.
The corporate has lengthy prided itself on its tight-knit tradition, and Kellnerova’s want, she mentioned, is that the household stay the bulk proprietor of PPF for many years to come back. Along with her kids in varied levels of life, she needs to allow them to acquire perception into the corporate’s operations.
“When they’re prepared, I’ll hand over the primary duty to them with a transparent conscience,” she mentioned. “I’m not involved in regards to the future, as a result of they’re already participating in working our corporations to some extent now.”
Practically three years later, that’s now not the case. Renata Kellnerova is now synonymous with the household enterprise — a Prague-based telecommunications, media, monetary companies and e-commerce empire that employs 61,000 individuals and operates in 25 nations.
Within the area, PPF is probably best-known because the proprietor of personal TV stations in six nations throughout Jap Europe, and of one of many Czech Republic’s largest cellphone corporations.
With $43 billion in property, PPF has emerged as one of many foremost winners of the Czech Republic’s post-communist transition, successful that Kellnerova’s late husband Petr Kellner leveraged by increasing into the fast-growing markets of Russia and China. However with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine upending geopolitics and enterprise, many corporations, together with PPF, at the moment are prioritizing progress nearer to dwelling.
In an e-mail trade with Bloomberg Information — her first public feedback to media since taking up PPF — Kellnerova recounted the difficult interval she spent familiarizing herself with the corporate’s complicated operations after the sudden demise of her husband.
“The primary precedence was to safe the soundness of PPF, after which begin growing the enterprise once more,” she mentioned. “I spotted that PPF is private for me and that my job is to arrange our youngsters in order that they’ll have the opportunity of taking management of the group someday themselves.”
Since assuming management, the 56-year-old has put her imprint on the corporate. She’s overseen a serious transfer away from Asia — as soon as a key supply of earnings — and has shifted consideration again to western markets. She’s chosen a brand new chief govt officer and parted methods with a few of her late husband’s shut allies. She introduced the corporate below full household possession by shopping for out two minority shareholders, then named herself and her three daughters to the board of a brand new holding firm housing all of their property.
Now the area’s wealthiest lady, along with her household’s internet price estimated to be round $11.8 billion, in accordance with the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, Kellnerova has been dedicating increasingly time to creating key funding selections. She cites her shut cooperation with PPF CEO Jiri Smejc, one in every of Kellner’s former funding companions, as central to her strategy.
“If the state of affairs requires it, we’re in a position to make selections about offers in only one weekend,” she mentioned. “We pleasure ourselves at PPF on being very versatile in reacting to funding alternatives.”
Beneath Kellnerova, PPF has finalized a number of giant transactions, together with agreeing to a €2.15 billion sale of a controlling stake in telecommunication operations throughout Jap and Central Europe to Abu Dhabi’s Emirates Telecommunications Group Co. The corporate’s client finance division, House Credit score Group BV, additionally agreed in 2022 to promote its Philippine and Indonesian companies in offers price about €615 million ($669 million).
This helped enhance PPF’s profitability to pre-pandemic ranges, with a first-half internet earnings of €709 million in 2023. That’s in contrast with a €406 million loss the yr prior, largely attributable to a expensive withdrawal from Russia.
Whereas there isn’t a actual timeline but for the whole exit from Asia, “the core focus of our enterprise has been shifting west prior to now three years,” Kellnerova mentioned.
With further money readily available and better rates of interest weighing on valuations of privately-owned and publicly traded property, PPF is scanning Europe for brand spanking new acquisition targets. Its largest buy but has been taking a stake in InPost SA, a Polish e-commerce firm that operates self-service supply lockers, and constructing a stake in German broadcaster ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE.
Like her late husband, Kellnerova retains a low public profile and intently guards her household’s privateness. She wouldn’t disclose particular funding targets that her firm has or is likely to be watching. PPF plans to take care of its 4 major funding pillars – monetary companies, telecommunications, media and e-commerce — however, she famous, “that doesn’t rule out smaller opportunistic investments.”
As a result of the group isn’t a typical funding fund with an outlined horizon for holding onto its property, “we will be affected person,” she mentioned. “That’s why short-term returns aren’t the first parameter once we are contemplating an funding alternative.”
PPF, now an intricate community of corporations, started its ascent shortly after the autumn of communism. Kellner based the corporate within the early Nineteen Nineties, when what was then Czechoslovakia began promoting state property by a program that issued vouchers which individuals might both trade for shares in corporations or place in funds.
In 1991, Kellner arrange a fund to amass stakes in 202 corporations. It ended up dealing with the sixth-biggest batch of property out there on the time, in accordance with the agency, which then grew to become generally known as PPF Group. Over time, PPF constructed a 20% stake in Ceska Pojistovna, the nation’s largest insurer, creating the muse of Kellner’s wealth. He cashed out in 2013, promoting the insurance coverage property to Italy’s Generali in a $3.3 billion deal.
As Kellner constructed up his empire, his spouse was occupied with the Kellner Household Basis, one of many Czech Republic’s first philanthropic organizations, which has donated almost 2 billion koruna ($89 million) to social initiatives and scholarships. Kellnerova brings this angle to her new perch, describing PPF as having “social duty that reaches past the sphere of enterprise.”
Alongside PPF, the post-communist gross sales of state property gave rise to a handful of different super-rich Czech households, together with property magnate Radovan Vitek, one in every of Europe’s largest real-estate buyers, and vitality tycoon Pavel Tykac. Firms owned by billionaires residing within the Czech Republic now make use of tens of 1000’s of employees throughout the continent and have performed a vital function within the area’s economies.
On the similar time, they’ve drawn scrutiny. In an interview late final yr, former Czech President Milos Zeman criticized the privatization course of for creating a pointy wealth hole within the former communist nation. Zeman was nonetheless a serious backer of Kellner, and even awarded him the best state honor after the tycoon was killed in a helicopter crash throughout a visit to Alaska.
“I actually valued Petr Kellner, we labored nicely collectively,” mentioned Zeman.
PPF additionally got here below hearth from the native investor neighborhood when it moved to drag the nation’s largest traded cellphone firm from the Prague inventory trade, lowering its market capitalization however giving the group full management. The method was finalized in 2022.
Whereas most shut associates and former staff have saved quiet about PPF’s new management, one in every of PPF’s former minority homeowners, Ladislav Bartonicek, shared his view in an interview with the nation’s largest enterprise day by day newspaper, Hospodarske Noviny, in September.
“The duty for Renata, who may be very actively concerned, and for the second era, is totally different,” he informed the newspaper. “It’s now not a one-man firm — in a great way. The shareholders will probably be extra conservative. It’s a query of who on the household facet would be the most concerned sooner or later.”
Kellnerova’s former and present enterprise companions declined to be interviewed for this story. Of her three daughters, the one one with a public profile is Anna, a 27-year-old show-jumping rider who competed within the 2020 Summer season Olympics in Tokyo.
The corporate has lengthy prided itself on its tight-knit tradition, and Kellnerova’s want, she mentioned, is that the household stay the bulk proprietor of PPF for many years to come back. Along with her kids in varied levels of life, she needs to allow them to acquire perception into the corporate’s operations.
“When they’re prepared, I’ll hand over the primary duty to them with a transparent conscience,” she mentioned. “I’m not involved in regards to the future, as a result of they’re already participating in working our corporations to some extent now.”
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