Who's going to steal Mero and Čepro?
Ladislav Bartoníček of PPF told MFD in mid-Dec. that the financial group will only make acquisitions in the future that have the potential to return hundreds of millions of euros within a few years. If we can believe Transport Minister Dan Ťok, part of PPF's strategy for making such a return at O2 CR must be to "steal" ČD-Telematika from Czech Railways. PPF's next target, according to Lenka Zlámalová in Týdeník Echo24, is Unipetrol. The plan, she wrote, is to join with J&T to buy Unipetrol from PKN Orlen and then to merge it with Mero and Čepro to create a petro-holding. Unipetrol's chemical business would be hived off to Andrej Babiš, whose permission would be needed for this megamerger to take place. PKN Orlen has made only losses at Unipetrol, so how does PPF plan to make a return of "hundreds of millions of euros"? Especially given that Babiš told Czech TV that Mero and Čepro are strategic companies and that his ministry definitely will not ever want to sell them? Oh, right, he didn't say anything about allowing someone to steal them.
Glossary of difficult words
to hive something off - to separate something from a larger group or organization, esp. from public to private ownership;megamerger - a merger of two entities that results in one company that maintains control over a large percentage of the market share in its sector.