{"id":196398,"date":"2024-12-16T18:14:08","date_gmt":"2024-12-16T18:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/16\/what-do-we-know-about-royal-mails-new-owner-daniel-kretinsky\/"},"modified":"2024-12-16T18:14:08","modified_gmt":"2024-12-16T18:14:08","slug":"what-do-we-know-about-royal-mails-new-owner-daniel-kretinsky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/16\/what-do-we-know-about-royal-mails-new-owner-daniel-kretinsky\/","title":{"rendered":"What do we know about Royal Mail’s new owner Daniel K\u0159et\u00ednsk\u00fd?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"What<\/div>


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The government has cleared the way for the sale of Royal Mail’s parent company to a Czech billionaire.<\/p>\n

Daniel K\u0159et\u00ednsk\u00fd’s company, EP Group, will gain control of the 500-year-old postal service and he has promised to honour some of its key delivery pledges “as long as he lives”.<\/p>\n

He has been described as the “quiet sphinx” for his inscrutable style. <\/p>\n

So who is the entrepreneur, and what could new ownership mean for an historic British company?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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According to the Sunday Times Rich List, the 49-year-old is now worth \u00a36bn – up \u00a32bn on 2023. <\/p>\n

He has adopted low-profile approach to his business dealings, but what we do know about Mr K\u0159et\u00ednsk\u00fd is that he made a large part of his money in Central and Eastern European energy via a labyrinthine structure of companies.<\/p>\n

This includes Eustream, which transports Russian gas via pipelines that run through Ukraine, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.<\/p>\n

In the UK, Mr K\u0159et\u00ednsk\u00fd has built up quite a portfolio in well-known brands through Vesa Equity Investment, a private firm which is registered in Luxembourg.<\/p>\n

He holds big stakes in supermarket group Sainsbury’s and the sportswear retailer Footlocker.<\/p>\n

And, like others in his wealth bracket, he has a football club or two. These include AC Sparta Prague, as well as Premier League club West Ham United in which he holds a 27% stake.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr K\u0159et\u00ednsk\u00fd holds a 27% stake in the West Ham United football club<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

Early beginnings<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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The businessman and lawyer was born in the city of Brno in the Czech Republic, some three hours away from Prague.<\/p>\n

His parents came from professional backgrounds, with his mother working as a top judge and his father a computer science academic. <\/p>\n

He studied both law and political science, taking up a job as a trainee lawyer in Brno soon after graduating. <\/p>\n

Afterwards he started working for the J&T investment group in 1999, climbing the ranks quickly and becoming a partner in 2003.<\/p>\n

Since then, he has built an expansive portfolio, including investments across the energy, property and retail industries. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Property purchases<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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Mr K\u0159et\u00ednsk\u00fd owns expansive properties in upmarket areas, which include Heath Hall on London’s Bishop Avenue – known as billionaire’s row.<\/p>\n

He reportedly bought it for \u00a365m and once rented the property to popstar Justin Bieber for about \u00a325,000 a week.<\/p>\n

He also spent about \u20ac21.5m (\u00a318.3m) buying a Parisian townhouse down the road from the Elys\u00e9e Palace from Russian oligarch and fertilizer magnate Dmitry Rybolovlev and his ex-wife.<\/p>\n

Mr K\u0159et\u00ednsk\u00fd also owns a share of the Velaa private island resort in the Maldives.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Future hopes<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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On Monday, K\u0159et\u00ednsk\u00fd’s EP Group said it had a “mission to make Royal Mail a successful modern postal operator with high quality service and products for its customers”.<\/p>\n

The conditions agreed by EP Group include keeping the brand name and Royal Mail’s headquarters and tax residency in the UK for the next five years.<\/p>\n

It has also reached an agreement in principle with unions that include workers getting a 10% share of any dividends paid out to Mr Kretinsky, as well as the formation of a workers group that will meet monthly with the directors of Royal Mail to give employees a bigger voice on how it is run.<\/p>\n

It is thought that Mr K\u0159et\u00ednsk\u00fd wants to build a pan-European logistics business to rival the likes of Evri or even Amazon. <\/p>\n

Eventually, by investing in things like delivery lockers, the hope is that Royal Mail could claw back the market share it has lost in recent years and turn its fortunes around.<\/p>\n

He has also said he would not walk away from the requirement to deliver letters throughout the UK six days a week – as long as he is running the service.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Getty Images The government has cleared the way for the sale of Royal Mail’s parent company to a Czech billionaire. Daniel K\u0159et\u00ednsk\u00fd’s company, EP Group, will gain control of the 500-year-old postal service and he has promised to honour some of its key delivery pledges “as long as he lives”. He has been described as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196399,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/bbcx\/grey-placeholder.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[604],"tags":[18928,63096,42641,5900,2923],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196398"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196398"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":196400,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196398\/revisions\/196400"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}