The elusive Czech at the centre of European business

Even by his own standards, the past 12 months have been unusually active for Daniel Kretinsky. Last February the Czech billionaire took Metro, a big German wholesaler, private. In April he bought International Distributions Services (IDS), the parent company of Britain’s Royal Mail. In November he became a major shareholder in TotalEnergies, a French oil giant. And on January 26th he launched a takeover offer for Fnac Darty, a French electronics retailer.

The 50-year-old tycoon, often referred to as the “Czech sphinx”, shies away from the limelight. Yet over the past few years he has quietly become one of the continent’s most influential businessmen, amassing a fortune of around $10bn in the process. His approach, which he describes in an interview with The Economist, has been to focus not on flashy new industries but those that serve consumers’ essential needs. Although he still believes in Europe’s potential, he fears a lack of pragmatism will drag it down.

The heart of Mr Kretinsky’s business empire is EPH, a privately held energy company that is one of Europe’s biggest—and dirtiest. The company focuses on generating electricity mainly through coal- and gas-fired power plants and the storage and transmission of natural gas in various countries across the continent. Mr Kretinsky formed EPH in 2009 with the backing of J&T, an investment firm where he had worked as a lawyer, and of Petr Kellner, a Czech billionaire who was one of his closest confidants until his death in 2021.

Mr Kretinsy’s speciality became scooping up dirty assets at bargain prices that listed utilities were forced to sell under pressure from investors and governments. In 2016, for example, he bought LEAG, a coal-mining business in Germany then owned by Vattenfall, a big Swedish utility.

Although he doesn’t preclude further investments in energy, Mr Ketinsky has recently been shifting his focus elsewhere. He says that is partly because he no longer sees as much opportunity to profitably deploy capital in the industry, and partly because he does not want his empire to rest on one pillar. Across EP Group, his holding company, he wants the share of profits coming from energy to fall from two-thirds to a half in the next three years.

That explains his recent flurry of dealmaking. Besides Metro and his current 28% of Fnac Darty, he also owns stakes in retailers including Britain’s Sainsbury’s and France’s Casino. In logistics, he has invested in GLS and PostNL, two Dutch delivery services, alongside IDS. Mr Kretinsky has also acquired various media assets: he controls a swathe of the Czech media market as well as Editis, a French publishing house, and magazines including Elle and Marianne. (He previously owned 49% of Le Monde, a leading French newspaper, but sold his stake in 2023.)

At the same time, Mr Kretinsky is making efforts to clean up EPH. The company aims to be coal-free by 2030. Some of its power plants currently running on the fuel will be converted to gas or biomass; others will be spun off or gradually closed. Not everybody is impressed. Radek Kubala, a Czech climate activist, calls the billionaire’s approach “greenwashing”.

For his part, Mr Kretinsky argues that, although well-intentioned, Europe’s efforts to get the world to decarbonise by using itself as an example have failed—and cost the continent’s industries dearly in the process. He believes Europe still has many advantages, including the scale of its market, the quality of its institutions and the standard of its education. But he worries that taxation and red tape are deterring capital and talent. “We are strong, but we are confused,” he says. “Hopefully we will wake up.” ■