The stake is worth € 13.4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and the management of conglomerate PPF Group, with assets worth € 44 billion, of which Kellner controlled 99%.
Although the widow of the 56-year-old entrepreneur and his four children must inherit his fortune, it is unclear who will replace him in the company in the long run. From a business point of view minority shareholder Ladislav Bartonicek will manage the company’s operationsas Kellner’s family did not play a significant role in PPF’s day-to-day operations, the group announced last week.
I am sure that, as an organized person, Peter Kellner took care of everything to make the process as simple as possible. The whole transfer usually takes a few months, ”said Peter Kinkel, an associate partner at PWC Legal, which represents local and international clients.
Critical time
“Peter had introduced management, relying on a large team of very experienced professionals and a structure in which much of the responsibility is within individual companies,” explains Jean-Pascal Duviasart, minority shareholder and CEO of PPF’s financial division.
His death occurs at a critical moment when PPF is trying to acquire one of the leading Czech consumer finance banks, Moneta Money Bank AS and discusses the potential sale of a minority stake in its telecommunications infrastructure company Cetin Group BV.
PPF Chief Financial Officer Katerina Jiraskova said she expects Moneta’s merger to move forward and that the group is sorting out the technical aspects of ownership, the Czech daily Hospodarske Noviny reported. According to her, family members are unlikely to join the PPF immediately, although they have the right to do so if they wish.
The group is recovering from pandemic losses suffered by its Home Credit unit, one of the largest lenders in Central and Eastern Europe. The consumer lender, which also operates in Asia, returned to moderate profits in the second half of 2020, after booking record loan impairments in the first six months of the year. The other mainstream of Kellner’s expanding business empire, telecoms in Central and Eastern Europe, is relatively unaffected by the pandemic.
The transfer of Kellner’s wealth can be facilitated by the fact that his extensive business network, operating in different industries and regions, is united under the holding structure of PPF, “said Peter Kinkel of PWC Legal.
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