The board of Royal Mail’s parent company, International Distribution Services (IDS), announced in May it had agreed to a takeover of the postal service by EP Group, which had valued the firm at £5.3bn.
But who is Mr Kretinsky and what is his background?
The 48-year-old is ranked 33rd on The Sunday Times Rich List with an estimated net worth of £6bn – up £2bn since 2023.
Low profile
He is known as the “Czech Sphinx” – a reference to the mysterious mythical creature – reportedly due to his enigmatic nature and reluctance to speak about his investments in public.
Mr Kretinsky is known for keeping a low profile and rarely gives interviews, but is said to be a keen Anglophile.
Czech journalist Michael Mares once described him to the New York Times as someone who “you can actually meet downtown, or see driving his [Porsche] Panamera… he lives here, but he’s not someone who will be in a paper”.
Image: The billionaire reportedly holds a 40% share in Sparta Prague, pictured here in action against Liverpool earlier this year. Pic: Reuters
What is his background?
Mr Kretinsky was born into a high-achieving family in the Czech city of Brno. His mother was a top judge, while his father was a doctor of computer science.
After graduating with a degree in political science, he worked as a lawyer before joining investment group J&T Finance Group in 1999.
He quickly rose up its ranks to become a partner in 2003, before making his first significant investment a year later in Czech football team Sparta Prague.
Mr Kretinsky is now the co-owner of his boyhood club and reportedly holds a 40% share.
Image: Daniel Kretinsky, second from right, watches West Ham’s European Conference League final victory over Fiorentina last year. Pic: AP
What are his other investments?
The billionaire made much of his fortune from energy and fossil-fuel investments, but has a variety of business interests in countries spanning his home nation, Germany, Italy, Slovakia, the Netherlands and the UK.
They include Eustream, which moves Russian gas via pipelines running through Ukraine, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and sportswear retailer Footlocker.
In 2009, he became heavily involved in the founding of J&T’s energy investment company EPH. He is the current chairman and majority shareholder of the now multi-billion pound company, which is part of a network of linked firms.
In 2018, he snapped up a 49% stake in French Newspaper Le Monde, followed by a 3.05% stake in Sainsbury’s two years later – becoming its fourth-largest shareholder.
He later raised his investment in the supermarket chain to nearly 10%.
Mr Kretinsky made another splash into the UK market in 2021 when he bought a 27% stake in West Ham United football club – a deal worth £150m which was first revealed by Sky News.
His EP Group already owns 27.6% of the Royal Mail.
Image: Mr Kretinsky’s villa in Prague. Pic: AP
What does he spend his money on?
Mr Kretinsky owns a 15-bedroom house in London’s Bishop Avenue – known as billionaire’s row – which he bought for £65m in 2015 and once rented to pop star Justin Bieber for a reputed £25,000 a week.
He also spent €21.5m (£18.3m) buying a Parisian townhouse down the road from the Elysee Palace from Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev.
The billionaire also owns a 25% share of the Velaa exclusive private island resort in the Maldives.
He lives near his office in Prague and has been redeveloping a property near Sparta’s ground known as Villa Kapsa, which was formerly the Iranian embassy.
Nike’s costs will go up $1bn (£728m) this year if US President Donald Trump’s tariffs remain at the current level, the company has told investors.
It follows a warning from the sports brand last month that it would raise prices due to the taxes imposed on imports.
Work to bring down costs is under way, including reducing supplies from China to the US.
It’s to reduce the amount of footwear made in China and imported to the US from 16% currently to a “high single digit” figure with Chinese supply being “reallocated to other countries around the world”.
On 2 April, Mr Trump announced country-specific tariffs which hit China hardest and escalated after several rounds of retaliatory rises.
After an agreement between Washington and Beijing the levy was brought down from a 145% tariff to 30% on Chinese goods.
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Price rises for consumers will start to come into effect in the autumn.
The latest warning on tariffs comes as Nike reported the worst quarterly results in more than three years.
Revenues were $11.1bn (£8.1bn) – the lowest since the third quarter of 2022.
It has been dealing with the after-effects of an unsuccessful move to sell direct-to-consumer with Wall Street analysts also critical of its dependence on lifestyle products and reliance on fashion trends.
Nike chief executive Elliott Hill had returned from retirement last year to again take the top job at the company.
The worst of the trade wars have already occurred, Mr Hill said, with “the headwinds to moderate from here”.
Police investigating the Horizon Post Office scandal have now identified seven suspects, with more than 45 people classed as “persons of interest”.
A “scaled-up” national team of officers has been in place for over six months as part of Operation Olympos – dedicated to looking at crimes related to the Horizon Post Office scandal.
The number of suspects has increased to seven since before Christmas, as part of a UK-wide investigation involving 100 officers.
Four have now been interviewed under caution.
Hundreds of subpostmasters were wrongfully convicted of stealing after faulty computer software created false accounting shortfalls in Post Office branches between 1999 and 2015.
Commander Stephen Clayman, Gold Command for Operation Olympos, described a “huge shift” in terms of their investigation and “significant progress”.
Image: Commander Stephen Clayman
“We’ve got over four million documents that are going to rise to about six million documents,” he said, “but we’re beginning to methodically work through those and looking at individuals who are associated with certain prosecutions.”
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He described a “pool of about 45 people plus” classed as “persons of interest”, with that number “expected to grow”.
He added that officers have questioned “some” in the past and “more recently” and are looking at the offences of perverting the course of justice and perjury.
The “wider pool” of persons of interest is made up of Post Office investigators, lawyers, and “management” across Fujitsu and the Post Office.
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The team of officers will be identifying actions which could amount to criminal offences on both an individual and corporate basis.
Any decisions made on whether to charge will not happen until after the Post Office inquiry findings are “published and reviewed”.
The Operation Olympos officers are part of four teams – a London hub and three regional teams – who have been described as “highly motivated” across England and Wales.
Police Scotland and the Police Service of Northern Ireland are also helping.
Cmdr Clayman said that officers “will be building a robust case” to pass on to the Crown Prosecution Service.
Image: Officer working in one of the four Operation Olympos teams
He also added that, compared to the inquiry, his officers will have to “prove this to the criminal standard…a much, much higher standard”.
He described feeling “optimistic” and “confident” that the teams will have “some successful outcomes”, and said they are “working as hard and as quickly as (they) can”.
Teams are involved in what has been described as a “focused strategy which gets to the heart of the issues”.
Their investigations are being overseen by the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the Metropolitan Police.
Victims have also been told that the police will not be reinvestigating every case but “taking a speculative look at cases” to focus on key people involved and evidence for prosecution.
Operation Olympos is also making use of special software to help process the amount of evidence to sift through material in relation to key events and identified cases.
Of the four suspects interviewed under caution, two were questioned in late 2021, one in late 2024 and the most recent in early 2025.
New Look is to hire investment bankers to undertake a strategic review which is expected to trigger an auction of the high street fashion chain.
Sky News has learnt that New Look’s owners, who are led by the investment firm Alcentra, have opened talks with banks about advising on a process to take place during the next 12 months.
An appointment, which follows unsolicited approaches for the business, is expected to be made in the near future.
New Look, which trades from approximately 340 stores and employs about 10,000 people across the UK, is the country’s second-largest womenswear retailer in the 18 to 44-year-old age group.
It has been owned by its current shareholders – Alcentra and Brait – since October 2020.
In April, Sky News reported that the investors were injecting £30m of fresh equity into the business to aid its digital transformation.
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Last year, the chain reported sales of £769m, with an improvement in gross margins and a statutory loss before tax of £21.7m – down from £88m the previous year.
Like most high street retailers, it endured a torrid COVID-19 and engaged in a formal financial restructuring through a company voluntary arrangement.
In the autumn of 2023, it completed a £100m refinancing deal with Blazehill Capital and Wells Fargo.
A spokesperson for New Look said the company did not “comment on rumour and speculation”.
“Management are focused on running the company and executing the strategy for long-term growth.
“The company is trading well and has supportive shareholders.”