Home » A helicopter crashes in Alaska, billionaire Peter Kellner dies: he was among the 100 richest men in the world

A helicopter crashes in Alaska, billionaire Peter Kellner dies: he was among the 100 richest men in the world

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The passion for heliskiing has betrayed him. Czech billionaire Petr Kellner died at the age of 56 in a helicopter crash in which he was traveling with some friends in the mountains of Alaska. The accident took place on Saturday, near the Knik glacier, north-east of Anchorage, for reasons still to be clarified. Married with four children, he was the richest man in the Czech Republic and ranked 86th among the richest men in the world with an estimated fortune of $ 15.8 billion. Known in Italy for the partnership of his Ppf Group with Generali between 2007 and 2014, when he then sold his entire stake in the Leone di Trieste, Kellner had made a fortune in the post-communist scenario of his country.

A graduate in economics, after the Velvet Revolution of 1989, with the opening of the former Czechoslovakia to the world, he started by selling photocopiers. But he soon realized that the great opportunity was that offered by the privatization of state-owned enterprises. Thus he founded the company Prvni Privatizacni Fond, then known by the acronym Ppf, which began to expand into finance, telecommunications, media, biotechnology, accumulating one after another assets that amounted to 44 billion euros in 2020 and becoming one of the main players in the telecommunications market in Central and Eastern Europe.

But Kellner, thanks to an almost infallible nose for business, had also bet on China. With Home Credit he entered the Chinese consumer credit market in 2010 and his reputation was such that in 2014 he attended a meeting between Czech President Milos Zeman and Chinese President Xi Jinping. “The president held Petr Kellner in high regard for his commercial success and is immensely sorry for his tragic death,” Zeman’s spokesman said in a condolence message reported by the Guardian. Ppf is currently acquiring a stake in Moneta Money Bank and has proposed to merge it with its Air Bank and parts of Home Credit. Announcing his death “with great sorrow”, the Ppf Group stresses that the entrepreneur was known “for his incredible work ethic and creativity”. “His private life, however, belongs to his family”, the Ppf specifies, announcing funerals “privately” and reserved only “for the closest members of the family” and asking the media to “respect the privacy of the family in this difficult time”.

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