VEDOMOSTI. Jiři Šmejc, a junior partner of the beneficial owner of investment group PPF Petr Kellner, preferred banking business to a stake in the group. Šmejc is to swap his 5% interest in PPF for equity holdings in Home Credit, Nomos-Bank and other banks of the group.
The group’s spokesman told Vedomosti business daily that Šmejc is going to sell 5% of PPF to Kellner. This is not a divorce between the two partners, he insisted adding that instead of the stake in PPF Šmejc will become a minority shareholder of banking group Home Credit (with operations in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, China and Vietnam), and also a minority shareholder of Russia-based Nomos-Bank, Greece’s Piraeus Bank and Czech lender Air Bank. Šmejc, as before, will oversee operations of Home Credit and hold full responsibility for the performance of PPF’s largest asset, and when doing this he will be more independent, the group’s spokesman quoted Kellner as saying. This is a joint decision of the partners, and PPF’s strategy (to hold the asset, control management and strategic investments of key partners) remains intact.
Šmejc said he himself decided to pull out of PPF and try his hand at ‘something new’, and “I will mainly focus on Home Credit’s activities, but at a certain point in time I will devote more attention to my projects independent of PPF”.
Discussions are under way over how much Šmejc will get for his 5% stake in PPF and which stakes he will buy in the banks, and calculations are in progress, the group’s source said. The deal is based on PPF’s asset value and, according to the preliminary data, the group’s assets cost €14.4 bln in 2011 and the group’s capital equaled €4.3 bln.
After the deal with Šmejc Petr Kellner will hold 99.21% of PPF, with the remaining 0.79% to be in the hands of Ladislav Bartoníček and Jean-Pascal Duvieusart.
