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34 I Cover story bne May 2017
fortune by setting up an investment fund during Vaclav Klaus’ botched coupon privatisation programme in the early 1990s. But unlike many of his fellow asset strippers and corporate raiders, PPF not only delivered a decent return for its coupon investors, but also had the stamina to become a long-term player on the Czech financial scene.
PPF seized control of monopoly insurer Ceska Pojistovna in 1996 after buying a 20% stake. This enabled it, together with allies, to outvote the state. Afterwards, Klaus’ finance minister, Ivan Kocarnik, who appeared to turn a blind eye to the state’s loss of control, glided through the revolving door to become the insurer’s chairman. Much later, Kellner gave a generous endowment to Klaus’ personal foundation.
Kellner overhauled the dinosaur insurer, bought out the state in 2001, and used its financial muscle to expand into other businesses and make opportunistic ventures. In 2007 he agreed to fold Ceska Pojistovna into a joint venture with Generali, which he exited in 2012 for €2.5bn.
This sale enabled Kellner to super- charge the expansion of Home Credit, a consumer lender he had launched in 1997. After experimenting with
the format in Central Europe, he expanded east to Russia (especially the regional cities) in 2002, and
then from 2007 into China, now seen as the source of future growth.
However, in recent years the billionaire has had several reverses in Russia, with bad loans soaring after the 2008 global financial crisis and the country’s ongo- ing economic weakness. He began to scale back his other investments there last year, selling the Eldorado electronic retail chain, and reducing his stake in Polymetal, the London-listed gold and silver miner, to 13%.
Back in the Czech Republic, PPF’s most recent big move was to buy 02 ’s Czech and Slovak operations from Telefonica for $3.2bn in 2014. PPF voluntarily divided the largest Czech telecom into a listed operator and a wholly owned
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HUNGARY
1
Sandor Csanyi
$1bn
Finance, Food processing
MOL CEO-chairman Sandor Csanyi built his fortune in the 1990s by purchasing shares in OTP with loans from the bank. Csanyi remains focused on OTP expansion, and his agriculture and food industry businesses, including Pick salami.
2
Laszlo Bige $635mn Fertilisers
Bige is the owner of Hungary’s leading fertiliser maker, Nitrogenmuvek. This summer will see the fruition of a six-year expansion project of his flagship company’s production capacity to 1,450 tonnes of nitrogen.
3
Gyorgy Gattyan $600mn
Adult services
Gyorgy Gattyan’s online adult content services, including the Live Jasmine site, have made him Hungary’s fourth richest man, but have brought him into regular trouble with the tax authorities. Despite victories at the European Court of Jus- tice, Gattyan has had his assets repeatedly frozen by the Hungarian tax office.
LATVIA
1
Aivars Lembergs $130mn
Property, logistics, media
Mayor of the Latvian port town of Ventspils, Lembergs (64) and his family are Latvia’s wealthiest people. Typically for an oligarch whose money was made early on during the murky years of Latvia’s transition to capitalism, Lembergs is still fighting allegations of corrup- tion, money laundering, and controversial links to Russia.
LITHUANIA
Name Net worth
Sector
1
Nerijus Numavicius $1bn
Retail
Numavicius (50) started off with a small retail business with his brothers that has now ex- panded to an empire spanning the Baltic states, Poland, Bulgaria, and Ukraine.
infrastructure company, increasing its combined value dramatically. It is expected to eventually sell off the operator.
Though he made his flying start in busi- ness under the rightwing Klaus, Kellner has never been closely involved with
any one political party. Indeed Kellner has managed to cultivate the populist President Milos Zeman, even lending the onetime Social Democrat his private jet to fly back from China in 2014. Zeman has enthusiastically pushed Home Credit’s expansion into China on his numerous visits to Beijing.