Daniel Kretinsky built his fortune on the low-cost takeover of highly polluting coal-fired power plants. He enters the capital of the World.
The Czech billionaire Kretinsky gets his hands on 49% of the shares of the holding The New World of Matthieu Pigasse, one of the shareholders of the group Le Monde .
Daniel Kretinsky is a paradox. In Prague as in Paris, he is an unknown, as the 43-year-old billionaire cultivates discretion on his private life, his political opinions. We know that this son of a teacher and a judge lives in a relationship with the daughter of the first Czech fortune. He plays golf. That he is an enlightened art lover.
At the same time, the man does not disdain acquisitions that attract the spotlight: football and the media. Kretinsky gave himself a kid's dream by buying the Sparta Prague club. In 2013, he resumed a flurry of Czech media.
In spring 2018, the papivore landed in France, collecting a pack of newspapers, including Elle and Marianne . Thursday, he entered the capital of the World , even if he remains a shareholder "sleeping" of the daily.
Legend has it that Kretinsky won his first million, at age 25, after winning a lawsuit on behalf of the group whose young lawyer quickly became a shareholder.
The only certainty, behind the lingering student, polyglot and Francophile, hides a formidable businessman. And if it was Kretinsky's secret? Business in all discretion.
His stroke of genius? The acquisition by its EPH group of an East German lignite mine in 2011, right at the moment when Germany goes nuclear. Then EPH bought out of arms, at a broken price. European groups no longer assume the image of a polluter transported by coal. EPH now weighs 50 mines and power plants, 25,000 employees.
It is one of the biggest polluters in Europe. But profitability, at least in the short term, is fantastic: 1.7 billion euros in profits in 2017 for 6 billion turnover. If Kretinsky enters the world, it is not for the money. The influence?