Milan, Prague - Petr Kellner, the Czech Republic's richest man, has decided to sell the Ceska pojistovna insurance company.
Kellner's PPF investment group has made a deal with Generali, an Italian insurance company and PPF's business partner. PPF will sell to Generali its 49 percent stake in Generali PPF Holding, which is a joint venture of PPF and Generali.
Generali will pay EUR 2.5 billion for the 49 percent stake. This puts the total value of Ceska pojistovna at EUR 5.1 billion.
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The contract also obliges the Italian company to pay EUR 352 million in dividends and 66 percent of expected profits in 2013 and 2014 to shareholders.
In total, PPF will receive EUR 2.69 billion from Generali.
The transfer will take place in two phases over the course of 2013 and 2014. Generali will first buy 25 percent of the shares by the end of March 2013 and the rest of the stake at the end of 2014.
PPF has also agreed to sell its 38.5 percent stake in Ingosstrach, a Russian insurance company, to Generali. In return, it will receive a 27.5 percent stake in PPF Partners, a management company.
"The deal with Generali ends one important period for PPF," said Kellner in an official statement, adding that the transaction represents an "excellent return on our original investment."
Kellner acquired the insurance company in 1996, when it was in the red, even though it was dominating the Czech insurance market.
In August 2006, Kellner split off a part of Ceska pojistovna, which eventually become Home Credit, a consumer finance company.
In 2007, PPF and Generali agreed to create a joint holding.
It is already clear that this deal will be one of the biggest transactions in the Czech business in 2013.
The biggest transaction of 2012 took place at the end of the year, when EPH, a joint venture of Daniel Kretinsky, Petr Kellner and J&T, acquired Slovensky plynarensky priemysl (SPP), a Slovak gas company, for about EUR 2.5 billion.
