The Office for the Protection of Competition (ÚOHS) has begun to assess the takeover of the Diplomat Hotel in Dejvice, Prague, by PPF Real Estate. The Antitrust Authority announced this on its website. The seller is the Thai company Rabbit Holdings. The investment group PPF, owned by Renáta Kellnerová with her daughters, will pay 73 million euros for the hotel, or about 1.8 billion CZK. This is the result of a regulatory announcement by the current owner of the hotel for the Thai stock exchange, which was pointed out by the Seznam News server.
The subject of the transaction is all shares of the Czech company Diplomat Prague, which owns a four-star hotel with 400 rooms and conference facilities in Prague’s Dejvice. PPF Group Supervisory Board member Tomáš Otruba will acquire a five percent stake in Diplomat Prague on the basis of a previously concluded agreement with PPF Real Estate, the investment group said.
“The proposed merger of the competitors should take place primarily in the areas of hotel accommodation services and services related to the organization of conferences and congresses. The decision in the above case has not yet been issued,” the Office said. The hotel is part of the Vienna House international network operated by the Wyndham Group.
PPF has completed the acquisition of the Hilton Prague Hotel, the largest in the Czech Republic, this year. According to the media, the value of the transaction was several billion crowns. In the hotel with almost 800 rooms and roughly 5000 square meters of conference space PPF Real Estate acquired a 95 percent share.
The five-star Four Seasons hotel near Charles Bridge PPF was acquired this year together with Tomáš Otruba and billionaire Michal Strnad, the price of this trade, according to earlier information of Hospodářské noviny, amounted to 100 million euros (roughly 2.5 billion CZK). According to the company’s website, the hotel Stages is also located in the Prague O2 Arena.
The PPF Group operates in 25 countries in Europe, Asia, North America and Africa. It invests in telecommunications, financial services, media, internet services, real estate, biotechnology and engineering. PPF owns assets for 41.7 billion euros (more than a trillion CZK) and employed about 45,000 people globally at the end of last year. The majority owner of PPF is Amalar Holding, in which the majority shareholder of PPF, Renáta Kellnerová and her three daughters, put their shares last year. After the August announcement of the purchase of a ten percent stake from Petr Kellner Jr., Kellnerová and her daughters will dominate PPF completely.
