The deal must first be approved by IDS's shareholders and regulators before it can proceed.
The 48-year-old Kretinsky is ranked 33rd on The Sunday Times Rich List (a guide to the richest people in the U.K.) with an estimated net worth of £6bn - up £2bn since 2023.
Kretinsky is known for keeping a low profile and rarely gives interviews, but is said to be a keen Anglophile.
He is known as the ‘Czech Sphinx’, reportedly due to his enigmatic nature and reluctance to speak about his investments in public.
Czech journalist Michael Mares once described him to the New York Times as someone whom “you can actually meet downtown, or see driving his [Porsche] Panamera... he lives here, but he's not someone who will be in a paper.”
Kretinsky gave a speech in 2015, in which he said: “We want to make money in industries that are dying because we think they’ll die much more slowly than the general consensus says.”
Kretinsky’s background
He was born into a high-achieving family in the Czech city of Brno. His mother was a top judge, while his father was a doctor of computer science.
After graduating with a degree in political science, he worked as a lawyer before joining investment group J&T Finance Group in 1999.
He quickly rose up its ranks to become a partner in 2003, before making his first significant investment a year later in the Czech football team Sparta Prague.
Kretinsky is now the co-owner of his boyhood club and reportedly holds a 40% share.
Other investments
The billionaire made much of his fortune from energy and fossil-fuel investments, but has a variety of business interests in countries including his home nation, Germany, Italy, Slovakia, the Netherlands, and the U.K.
These include Eustream, which moves Russian gas via pipelines running through Ukraine, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, and sportswear retailer Footlocker.
In 2009 he became heavily involved in the founding of J&T’s energy investment company EPH. He is the current chairman and majority shareholder of the now multi-billion pound company, which is part of a network of linked firms.
In 2018 he acquired a 49% stake in the French newspaper Le Monde, followed by a 3.05% stake in Sainsbury's two years later - becoming its fourth-largest shareholder.
He later increased his investment in the supermarket chain to nearly 10%.
Kretinsky made another significant move into the U.K. market in 2021 when he bought a 27% stake in West Ham United football club - a deal worth £150m.
His EP Group already owns 27.6% of the Royal Mail.
