Čtvrtek 28. března 2024, svátek má Soňa
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Lidovky.cz

PPF Group rapidly offloading stake in Italy’s Generali

  11:45

Czech billionaire Petr Kellner’s PPF Group is rapidly selling off shares in Italy’s Generali insurance group

PPF Group’s headquarters in Prague foto: PPF GroupČeská pozice

Since November 25, the PPF Group controlled by Czech billionaire Petr Kellner has sold around 4.5 million shares in Italian insurance group Generali for €54.4 million (around Kč 1.37 billion), the weekly Tyden has reported. The shares sold to date account for 14 percent of the Netherlands-registered investment group’s stake in the Italian insurer.

Oligarch Kellner’s PPF Group bought 31.45 million shares in Generali in 2010 for €562.6 million (Kč 13.8 billion), i.e. approximately €18 per share, and according to Tyden’s information, the 4.5 million shares sold over the past two weeks fetched an average of €12 a piece — meaning PPF Group has lost over Kč 680 million on the shares it sold.    

PPF Group spokesman Milan Tománek told the ČTK news agency that the group’s shares in Generali are now being managed by an independent investment manager. “This independent investment manager is administering the shares in accordance with [our] investment policy, which sets the basic parameters for the portfolio under [independent] management such as the overall limits for various investment instruments into which the portfolio manager can invest on his own initiative,” he said on Tuesday.          

From Generali’s reports on shareholder’s transactions, it appears that Kellner decided to begin off loading a much larger portion of his stake in the insurer after testing the markets with the sell-off of 51,000 shares. Generali shares dropped to as low as €10.6 in August. So far this year, the shares traded on the Milan stock exchange hit a high of €16.99 in February.  

In 2008, PPF and Generali launched a joint venture, the Generali PPF Holding, in which PPF Group has a 49 percent stake. The holding is registered in the Netherlands, has its headquarters in Prague and has operations in 14 countries. In Russia, Kellner’s PPF Investments is involved in the longest on-going cooperate legal dispute in the country with Oleg Derepaska’s Basic Element over control in one of Russia’s largest insurance companies, Ingosstrakh. A number of Russian observers have pointed out that Kellner would not abe able to challenge Derepaska in Russia without very strong connections within the Russian leadership. 

Kellner, the richest Czech, made his first millions in the coupon privatization in the Czech Republic in the early 1990s, and then managed through largely unknown circumstances to gain an advantageous position to participate in the wild privatizations in Russia from 1994 onwards when he amassed his fortune alongside Russia’s oligarchs; like them (especially in the 1990s), Kellner shuns all publicity.

Over half of the PPF Group’s income is generated from its assets in the former Soviet Union, primarily Russia.

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