Prague:
Petr Kellner, the Czech Republic’s wealthiest individual with a fortune topping $13 billion, died aged 56 in a helicopter crash in Alaska, his spokeswoman stated on Monday.
Kellner, who meticulously guarded his privacy, owned the monetary, telecommunications, engineering and insurance coverage PPF Group, which employs 94,000 people today worldwide.
“With deep regret we announce that PPF Group founder and majority shareholder Mr Petr Kellner died tragically in a helicopter crash in the Alaska Range on Saturday,” PPF Group spokeswoman Jitka Tkadlecova told AFP.
“The causes of the accident, in which five people died in total, are being investigated,” she added.
Czech media stated Kellner was on a heli-skiing trip.
The Forbes magazine place Kellner’s wealth in 2020 at 293 billion Czech crowns (11.2 billion euros, $13.2 billion).
Kellner, who began his business enterprise promoting copy machines, founded the PPF Group in 1991, two years following the fall of Communism in the former Czechoslovakia.
The group with international assets worth 44 billion euros comprises Home Credit International, the world’s biggest non-banking customer lender with in depth activities on the Chinese market place.
PPF lately purchased the CME media group operating Television corporations in central and eastern Europe, as nicely as Telenor’s telecommunications assets in the Balkans.
Kellner’s daughter Anna Kellnerova is a two-time Czech junior show jumping champion with an ambition to seem at the Tokyo Olympics this summer season.
Kellner’s funeral will take location “in a narrow family circle”, Tkadlecova stated.
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