This year, 11 Czechs were among the dollar billionaires. The richest of them is still the heiress of the PPF investment group, Renáta Kellnerová, with assets of about 421 billion crowns. The jumper of the year then became the armorer Michal Strnad, who moved up hundreds of places in the world rankings year-on-year. With assets of 103 billion crowns, it ranks sixth among Czechs. He even surpassed Andrej Babiš, Forbes magazine reported.
The composition of the eleven Czech dollar billionaires remained the same as last year. On the first place for the third year is Kellnerová, the widow of businessman Petr Kellner, who together with his children owns the PPF group and the family holding Amalar.
The second and third places were occupied by the owner of the KKCG investment group, Karel Komárek, with assets of 9.5 billion dollars (222 billion crowns) and the owner of Energetický a próvyleho holding (EPH), Daniel Křetínský, with assets of 9.4 billion dollars (220 billion crowns). This year Komárek moved to second place, last year he was third among Czechs behind Křetínský.
Just like last year, they were followed by the owner of the energy group Sev.en Energy Pavel Tykač with assets of 7.7 billion dollars (180 billion crowns) and real estate magnate Radovan Vítek with assets of 6.7 billion dollars (157 billion crowns).
In an international comparison, Kellner was ranked 104th this year. It thus fell three places year-on-year, despite an increase in assets of $1.5 billion. Komárek took the 249th position and Křetínský 256th. The 334th place belonged to Tykač and the 409th position to Vítek.
The first five richest Czechs were followed by Strnad at the 712th place overall. Compared to last year’s ranking, however, he improved by 804 places and his assets more than doubled year-on-year. Strnad owns the holding Czechoslovak Group, which operates in the automotive, railway, aviation and watch industries and manufactures weapons, ammunition and special vehicles. The holding’s sales have recently been growing, among other things, in connection with the war in Ukraine.
On the contrary, Forbes recorded the most significant drop in Andrej Babiš, who fell 241 places to 920th place after the decrease in the value of his property by 600 million dollars. The head of the parliamentary opposition movement ANO receives income from the Agrofert concern, which Babiš previously owned directly, through trust funds.
Just like last year, the founders of the Avast antivirus company Pavel Baudiš and Eduard Kučera, the owner of the Alza.cz e-shop Aleš Zavoral and the co-founder of the Penta investment group Marek Dospiva made it to the dollar billionaires from the Czech Republic.
According to Forbes, the combined fortune of Czech dollar billionaires exceeded 1.5 trillion crowns for the first time. The year-on-year weakening of the koruna mainly contributed to this. “For example, the assets of Aleš Zavoral, the owner of the domestic e-commerce number one Alza.cz, were estimated by Forbes at two billion dollars, just like a year ago, but in crowns this means an increase of four billion,” the magazine said.
The world ranking is led by the owner of a fashion empire
The richest man in the world remains with 233 billion dollars the Frenchman Bernard Arnault, who is the owner of the fashion empire LVMH. He is followed in the Forbes ranking by Tesla founder Elon Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Forbes included 2,781 people in the ranking this year, which is 141 more than last year. The super-rich also have more money than ever before, with their combined wealth reaching $14.2 trillion – two trillion more than a year ago. The largest number of billionaires are still citizens of the United States, China remains second. Women make up 13 percent of billionaires.
Two-thirds of the world’s billionaires are richer than a year ago. But no one has improved as much as Mark Zuckerberg, who made $116.2 billion in a single year as the stock price of his company, Meta Platforms, nearly tripled. Zuckerberg jumped from 16th place to 4th place, his fortune is estimated at 177 billion dollars.
Rounding out the top five is Oracle’s Larry Ellison with an estimated fortune of $141 billion. The 20 richest people in the world are thus dominated primarily by Americans from technology giants, i.e., in addition to Ellison, the founders of Google Larry Page and Sergey Brin or the former heads of Microsoft Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates.
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