Daniel Křetínský built a company empire worth billions out of nothing. British postmen are now trembling at his plans.

He doesn’t look at the cards. What he intends to do with the  Royal Mail  remains unclear. At least not a word is heard from the office of his holding company in Prague’s old town. However, he would have the opportunity to access it – and even cheaply. The UK Business Secretary recently completed an investigation under the National Security and Investment Act into whether Daniel Křetínský could increase his stake in the Post beyond 25 percent. Result: He can.

The billionaire is still just under a participation of a quarter. According to city rules, if he exceeded the 30 percent threshold, he would have to make a takeover bid for the battered Royal Mail. Then the CWU postal union fears that Křetínský will break up the company. He could spin off the profitable  GLS parcel service from the loss-making mail business  and sell it, probably at a great profit. The ailing mail would be left behind. The CWU has already spoken of a “declaration of war on the postal workers”. While more than 100,000 postmen on the island went on strike for higher wages before Christmas, Křetínský could not be elicited a word.

The press dubbed him the “Czech sphinx”, even though the Brno-born investor, who is polite and reserved in his personal dealings, always insists that he is anything but a sphinx or a phantom. Nevertheless, much about him remains a mystery. His rise from law student to multi-billionaire also seems miraculous.

Humble beginnings

Born in 1975 as the son of a computer scientist and a law professor, Křetínský started his career in a small law firm in Brno before moving to Patrik Tkáč’s investment boutique J&T. He is one of those billionaires who acquired large fortunes in the wave of privatizations in the post-communist Czech Republic – alongside Petr Kellner, who was the richest man in the country until his accidental death in 2021 and with whom Křetínský worked closely on some energy investments. He also met the waiter’s daughter Anna, a well-known show jumping champion. They have been in a relationship for several years and have a son. But he doesn’t have too much time for his family, his yacht or the holiday resort in the Maldives; the Czech businessman is considered a workaholic.

As a student, he started small, with the equivalent of around a thousand euros in seed capital from his stepfather, which he successfully used to speculate with shares in newly privatized companies. At J&T he learned how to make investment deals. Eventually he founded his own holding company, Tkáč, which mainly invested in energy companies. Since 2016, they have bundled their activities in the EP Global Commerce. Křetínský, who likes to examine company balance sheets at night, is considered a cool calculator. As a recipe for success, he says, buying up ailing companies “that are really, really badly managed” and then cannibalizing the existing assets.

A decade ago he started expanding beyond the Czech Republic and casting his net. One of the biggest catches was the Metro. He now holds more than 40 percent of the Düsseldorf retail giant. His attempt to take over the company completely in 2018 failed due to resistance from the Beisheim and Meridian Foundations, but he eventually won the power struggle with ex-CEO Olaf Koch and has since sent three confidants to the supervisory board. He holds a stake in the TV group ProSiebenSat1, which he has shrunk to just under 3 percent. At the Wiesbaden real estate  financier Aareal Bank he is also involved. Křetínský is also interested in sports: in his homeland, the sports fan has been the owner of the Sparta Prague football club for years, in England he acquired a stake in West Ham United last year. In addition, Křetínský is the second largest shareholder in the British supermarket chain Sainsbury’s.

Participation variations like in the grocery store

His corporate empire, which includes the holding company EP Group and the investment company Vesa, now includes more than a hundred holdings in companies with more than 25,000 employees. Some ask what his strategy is. The diversity of holdings from very disparate sectors is like a general store: power plants and coal mining in the Czech Republic and Germany (including the Mitteldeutsche Braunkohlegesellschaft, Mibrag, and LEAG in Lusatia), wholesale and retail trade, banks, the British Post Office, French furniture stores, an American department store chain (Macy’s), some media holdings in several countries and the Château du Marais, a Louis XVI palace near Paris, which he recently bought for a good 40 million euros and wants to convert into a luxury hotel. Křetínský,

But when the Czech bought a stake in the left-liberal Parisian daily Le Monde four years ago, it triggered a rebellion in the editorial staff, who feared for their independence and formulated a flaming protest petition. All sorts of intellectuals from Jürgen Habermas to the left-wing author Naomi Klein signed. This is probably not how Křetínský imagined his reception in Parisian society. A journalist from the rival newspaper “Libération” wrote what was supposed to be a tell-all book about the supposed dark man who, with his lignite, was also one of the biggest polluters in Europe.

The purchase of the Lusatian lignite business from the Swedish group Vattenfall seven years ago was probably one of the most profitable coups that Křetínský has managed. The Swedes wanted to get rid of their politically sensitive power plants and open-cast mines, but the Czech with good political connections to Saxony grabbed it. With the purchase of the systems (with a book value of 3.4 billion euros), he made good money. He didn’t pay anything, but received extra money from Vattenfall: 1.7 billion euros for the future recultivation of the LEAG coalfields between Görlitz and Cottbus. With the coal compromise, when German politicians were negotiating the end of mining, the Czech billionaires Křetínský and Kellner opposed each other for so long that

So far, his involvement with the Royal Mail has been a roller coaster. First it went uphill rapidly when Corona triggered a boom in the parcel division, then the price fell again. The winnings have all been lost again. Now it looks like a permanent crisis at the British Post, which is more than five hundred years old. In 2022, the price of the Royal Mail group IDS fell by around 60 percent. The market valuation is only 2 billion pounds. This is a good opportunity for Křetínský “to snag the shares at a discount price,” says Victoria Scholar from the investor platform Interactive Investor. Křetínský, who almost never gives interviews, leaves the British in the dark about his plans. But it is quite possible that he will come with new surprises in the new year.

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