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Daniel Kretinsky is becoming the new man in charge of the Royal Mail.

The takeover of Royal Mail by his EP Group has been approved.

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”.

Soccer Football - Europa League - Round of 16 - Second Leg - Liverpool v Sparta Prague - Anfield, Liverpool, Britain - March 14, 2024 Sparta Prague's Ladislav Krejci in action with Liverpool's Mohamed Salah REUTERS/Molly Darlington
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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.

Daniel Kretinsky, 2nd from right, Czech co-owner of West Ham United and owner of AC Sparta Praha, and Member of the Board of West Ham United Jiri Svarc, right, are seen prior to the European Conference League final match: ACF Fiorentina vs West Ham United FC, on June 7, 2023, in Prague, Czech Republic. Photo/Ondrej Deml Photo/Ondrej Deml (CTK via AP Images)
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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.

Read more: Many are mystified why a Czech billionaire wants to buy Royal Mail’s owner

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.

The fourth richest Czech and owner of Sparta football club and and director and major shareholder of English football club West Ham United - Czech billionaire's Daniel Kretinsky functionalist villa Kapsa (Kapsova villa) in Prague, Czech Republic, November 21, 2023. The family house of Lumir Kapsa (co-owner of the Prague based Kapsa - Muller construction company) constructed by the design of the architects Otakar Novotny, Adolf Loos and Karel Lhota in the functionalist style. Photo/Milos Ruml (CT
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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.

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Chair candidates battle to check in at Premier Inn-owner Whitbread

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Chair candidates battle to check in at Premier Inn-owner Whitbread

Two chairs of FTSE-100 companies are vying to succeed Adam Crozier at the top of Whitbread, the London-listed group behind the Premier Inn hotel chain.

Sky News has learnt that Christine Hodgson, who chairs water company Severn Trent, and Andrew Martin, chair of the testing and inspection group Intertek, are the leading contenders for the Whitbread job.

Mr Crozier, who has chaired the leisure group since 2018, is expected to step down later this year.

The search, which has been taking place for several months, is expected to conclude in the coming weeks, according to one City source.

Ms Hodgson has some experience of the leisure industry, having served on the board of Ladbrokes Coral Group until 2017, while Mr Martin was a senior executive at the contract caterer Compass Group and finance chief at the travel agent First Choice Holidays.

Under Mr Crozier’s stewardship, Whitbread has been radically reshaped, selling its Costa Coffee subsidiary to The Coca-Cola Company in 2019 for nearly £4bn.

The company has also seen off an activist campaign spearheaded by Elliott Advisers, while Mr Crozier orchestrated the appointment of Dominic Paul, its chief executive, following Alison Brittain’s retirement.

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It said last year that it sees potential to grow the network from 86,000 UK bedrooms to 125,000 over the next decade or so.

Mr Crozier is one of Britain’s most seasoned boardroom figures, and now chairs BT Group and Kantar, the market research and data business backed by Bain Capital and WPP Group.

He previously ran the Football Association, ITV and – in between – Royal Mail Group.

On Friday, shares in Whitbread closed at £25.41, giving the company a market capitalisation of about £4.5bn.

Whitbread declined to comment this weekend.

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Bank chiefs to Reeves: Ditch ring-fencing to boost UK economy

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Bank chiefs to Reeves: Ditch ring-fencing to boost UK economy

The bosses of four of Britain’s biggest banks are secretly urging the chancellor to ditch the most significant regulatory change imposed after the 2008 financial crisis, warning her its continued imposition is inhibiting UK economic growth.

Sky News has obtained an explosive letter sent this week by the chief executives of HSBC Holdings, Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest Group and Santander UK in which they argue that bank ring-fencing “is not only a drag on banks’ ability to support business and the economy, but is now redundant”.

The CEOs’ letter represents an unprecedented intervention by most of the UK’s major lenders to abolish a reform which cost them billions of pounds to implement and which was designed to make the banking system safer by separating groups’ high street retail operations from their riskier wholesale and investment banking activities.

Their request to Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, to abandon ring-fencing 15 years after it was conceived will be seen as a direct challenge to the government to take drastic action to support the economy during a period when it is forcing economic regulators to scrap red tape.

It will, however, ignite controversy among those who believe that ditching the UK’s most radical post-crisis reform risks exacerbating the consequences of any future banking industry meltdown.

In their letter to the chancellor, the quartet of bank chiefs told Ms Reeves that: “With global economic headwinds, it is crucial that, in support of its Industrial Strategy, the government’s Financial Services Growth and Competitiveness Strategy removes unnecessary constraints on the ability of UK banks to support businesses across the economy and sends the clearest possible signal to investors in the UK of your commitment to reform.

“While we welcomed the recent technical adjustments to the ring-fencing regime, we believe it is now imperative to go further.

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“Removing the ring-fencing regime is, we believe, among the most significant steps the government could take to ensure the prudential framework maximises the banking sector’s ability to support UK businesses and promote economic growth.”

Work on the letter is said to have been led by HSBC, whose new chief executive, Georges Elhedery, is among the signatories.

His counterparts at Lloyds, Charlie Nunn; NatWest’s Paul Thwaite; and Mike Regnier, who runs Santander UK, also signed it.

While Mr Thwaite in particular has been public in questioning the continued need for ring-fencing, the letter – sent on Tuesday – is the first time that such a collective argument has been put so forcefully.

The only notable absentee from the signatories is CS Venkatakrishnan, the Barclays chief executive, although he has publicly said in the past that ring-fencing is not a major financial headache for his bank.

Other industry executives have expressed scepticism about that stance given that ring-fencing’s origination was largely viewed as being an attempt to solve the conundrum posed by Barclays’ vast investment banking operations.

The introduction of ring-fencing forced UK-based lenders with a deposit base of at least £25bn to segregate their retail and investment banking arms, supposedly making them easier to manage in the event that one part of the business faced insolvency.

Banks spent billions of pounds designing and setting up their ring-fenced entities, with separate boards of directors appointed to each division.

More recently, the Treasury has moved to increase the deposit threshold from £25bn to £35bn, amid pressure from a number of faster-growing banks.

Sam Woods, the current chief executive of the main banking regulator, the Prudential Regulation Authority, was involved in formulating proposals published by the Sir John Vickers-led Independent Commission on Banking in 2011.

Legislation to establish ring-fencing was passed in the Financial Services Reform (Banking) Act 2013, and the regime came into effect in 2019.

In addition to ring-fencing, banks were forced to substantially increase the amount and quality of capital they held as a risk buffer, while they were also instructed to create so-called ‘living wills’ in the event that they ran into financial trouble.

The chancellor has repeatedly spoken of the need to regulate for growth rather than risk – a phrase the four banks hope will now persuade her to abandon ring-fencing.

Britain is the only major economy to have adopted such an approach to regulating its banking industry – a fact which the four bank chiefs say is now undermining UK competitiveness.

“Ring-fencing imposes significant and often overlooked costs on businesses, including SMEs, by exposing them to banking constraints not experienced by their international competitors, making it harder for them to scale and compete,” the letter said.

“Lending decisions and pricing are distorted as the considerable liquidity trapped inside the ring-fence can only be used for limited purposes.

“Corporate customers whose financial needs become more complex as they grow larger, more sophisticated, or engage in international trade, are adversely affected given the limits on services ring-fenced banks can provide.

“Removing ring-fencing would eliminate these cliff-edge effects and allow firms to obtain the full suite of products and services from a single bank, reducing administrative costs”.

In recent months, doubts have resurfaced about the commitment of Spanish banking giant Santander to its UK operations amid complaints about the costs of regulation and supervision.

The UK’s fifth-largest high street lender held tentative conversations about a sale to either Barclays or NatWest, although they did not progress to a formal stage.

HSBC, meanwhile, is particularly restless about the impact of ring-fencing on its business, given its sprawling international footprint.

“There has been a material decline in UK wholesale banking since ring-fencing was introduced, to the detriment of British businesses and the perception of the UK as an internationally orientated economy with a global financial centre,” the letter said.

“The regime causes capital inefficiencies and traps liquidity, preventing it from being deployed efficiently across Group entities.”

The four bosses called on Ms Reeves to use this summer’s Mansion House dinner – the City’s annual set-piece event – to deliver “a clear statement of intent…to abolish ring-fencing during this Parliament”.

Doing so, they argued, would “demonstrate the government’s determination to do what it takes to promote growth and send the strongest possible signal to investors of your commitment to the City and to strengthen the UK’s position as a leading international financial centre”.

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Post Office to unveil £1.75bn banking deal with big British lenders

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Post Office to unveil £1.75bn banking deal with big British lenders

The Post Office will next week unveil a £1.75bn deal with dozens of banks which will allow their customers to continue using Britain’s biggest retail network.

Sky News has learnt the next Post Office banking framework will be launched next Wednesday, with an agreement that will deliver an additional £500m to the government-owned company.

Banking industry sources said on Friday the deal would be worth roughly £350m annually to the Post Office – an uplift from the existing £250m-a-year deal, which expires at the end of the year.

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The sources added that in return for the additional payments, the Post Office would make a range of commitments to improving the service it provides to banks’ customers who use its branches.

Banks which participate in the arrangements include Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest Group and Santander UK.

Under the Banking Framework Agreement, the 30 banks and mutuals’ customers can access the Post Office’s 11,500 branches for a range of services, including depositing and withdrawing cash.

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The service is particularly valuable to those who still rely on physical cash after a decade in which well over 6,000 bank branches have been closed across Britain.

In 2023, more than £10bn worth of cash was withdrawn over the counter and £29bn in cash was deposited over the counter, the Post Office said last year.

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A new, longer-term deal with the banks comes at a critical time for the Post Office, which is trying to secure government funding to bolster the pay of thousands of sub-postmasters.

Reliant on an annual government subsidy, the reputation of the network’s previous management team was left in tatters by the Horizon IT scandal and the wrongful conviction of hundreds of sub-postmasters.

A Post Office spokesperson declined to comment ahead of next week’s announcement.

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