The Energy Billionaire Who Stormed French Elite With M&A Barrage
Daniel Kretinsky has a huge cash pile available for acquisitions that’s fueling a series of high-profile deals over the past year, especially in France.
Kretinsky is using record profits from his energy business to fund acquisitions.
Photographer: Stanislav Krupar/laif/ReduxDaniel Kretinsky likes things that others discard. The Czech billionaire has spent a decade assembling an empire stretching from power plants to retail and media where most of the recent purchases shared one thing in common: they were financially distressed.
Armed with a war chest that has made him one of the most prominent dealmakers in Europe, he is now taking advantage of the record profit his energy business is churning out to snap up companies pressured by high debt. Besides winning a deal to gain control of troubled French supermarket chain Casino Guichard Perrachon SA in a multi-billion-euro restructuring process last month, he has announced investments in sectors as diverse as technology and book publishing.