The owner of PPF Group, Petr Kellner, who tragically died in a helicopter accident two weeks ago, decided at the end of last year to move PPF Financial Holding from the Netherlands to the Czech Republic. He informs about it on the website Deník N. Holding manages PPF banka, but above all the credit group Home Credit, WHich includes Air Bank or Zonka’s lender called Benxy. According to PPF, these Czech companies are the reason for the move, the website writes. Until now, Kellner has concentrated its headquarters in the Netherlands.
“Given the scope and regulatory importance of banking services provided by PPF Banka and Air Bank, banks domiciled in the Czech Republic, the Czech National Bank is already the consolidating supervisor for the group of companies covered by PPF Financial Holdings BV,” Deník N quotes a group spokesman Leoš. Veil.
According to Rousek, the relocation of the headquarters to the Czech Republic will simplify supervisory and licensing processes and thus operational savings.
The decision deviates from Kellner’s current strategy, the website states. He controlled almost four hundred companies through a tangle of foreign companies located in more than 30 countries. He placed the core part of the business, the primary company PPF Group, and the significant business blocs’ critical pillars in the Netherlands.
The Home Credit Group has brought the most significant profits to the entire group. Still, in the last less than two years, the situation has changed significantly due to the coronavirus pandemic and regulatory changes in China, the website recalls. Home Credit thus fell into a loss of 15.3 billion crowns.
According to the head of the Supervisory Board of PPF Group, František Dostálek, the website states that Kellner did not perceive the situation in China as a loss. “I think he took it in such a way that he managed to realize the opportunity that he had in China,” Dostálek told the website. He added that China’s reputation is deteriorating due to what is happening around Hong Kong, causing “greater tension” in trade.
Dostálek, who discussed his visions with Kellner for years and audited PPF, was the main reason for the headquarters’ location in the Netherlands, the stability of the business environment, and law enforcement. “The Czech environment did not seem perfect to him in this,” Dostálek told Deník. According to him, the main reason was not in the tax relief that domiciled in the Netherlands brings. “It may have played a role, but the main reason was really in the stability of the business environment and law enforcement,” he said.
PPF Group invests in several industries, from financial services to telecommunications, media, biotechnology, real estate to engineering. In addition to the Czech Republic, PPF operates in 24 other countries on three continents – Europe, Asia, and North America. PPF has its corporate ownership and management structure in the Netherlands. The critical holding company of the group is PPF Group NV, based in Amsterdam. Until his death, the majority owner of PPF Group, NV, was the wealthiest Czech, Petr Kellner, who, according to its annual report for 2019, controlled 98.93 percent of PPF. The group employs 98,000 people worldwide, and in the Czech Republic alone, PPF had around 14,000 employees at the end of last June. PPF Group reported a profit after tax of 935 million euros (24.5 billion crowns) in 2019, compared to 815 million euros a year earlier.