Investment group Penta is buying ČSAD Praha Holding, which owns the Florenc bus station and adjacent land, through Penta Real Estate. The merger of the companies is being assessed by the Office for the Protection of Competition (ÚOHS), which informed about it on its website. The antitrust authority is assessing the transaction in a so-called simplified procedure, so it will issue a decision within 20 days. The companies did not disclose the price of the transaction.
Penta Real Estate is buying the parent company of ČSAD Praha Holding, Rextim Holding. “The proposed merger of the competitors takes place mainly in the areas of renting of non-residential premises in Prague, property development activities in Prague, provision of parking spaces in Prague, services provided by bus stations to entities operating public passenger bus transport in Prague, retail sale of fuel at petrol stations in Prague, operation of hotels in Prague and operation of currency exchange activities in currency exchange offices in Prague,” the authority said in the notification.
The Florenc bus station stands on lucrative land, the upper part of which falls within the cadastre of Nové Město, the lower part within Karlín. In the past, the Penta group wanted to buy the land of ČSAD Praha Holding adjacent to the station, but in 2016 ČSAD announced that it would build its own project on the land. In it, ČSAD wanted to turn a brownfield site around the Florenc station into an urban complex. Pavel Vráblík, CEO of ČSAD Praha Holding, told ČTK in June that the Florenc 21 project will include the bus station as part of a new building with office space and apartments. At that time, he estimated the investment at several billion crowns.
About 450 buses pass through the largest bus station in the Czech Republic every day. Vráblík estimated in June that ten million people passed through the station in 2019, a number that dropped by about a million after the pandemic. The station is operated by about 100 carriers. FlixBus and RegioJet are among those with the largest share of passes. The Florenc bus station is mainly used by international and long-distance transport.
ČSAD Praha Holding was established in 2004 and is the successor of the defunct ČSAD ÚAN Praha Florenc and ČSAD Praha Pankrác. Rextim Holding was established in 2006. In 2022, it reported a total turnover of CZK 423 million, with an after-tax profit of CZK 358 million. Thirty-three percent of Rextim Holding is jointly owned by Roman Šplíchal and Ivana Šplíchalová.
Penta Investments is a Central European investment group founded in 1994. It is active mainly in healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, retail, real estate development and media. Its portfolio companies employ more than 40,000 people. Penta operates in more than ten European countries, with offices in Prague, Bratislava and Warsaw. The main co-owners are businessman Marek Dospiva and the family of Jaroslav Haščák.
Last year, the group posted a net profit of CZK 11.6 billion, and the companies in its portfolio generated sales of CZK 192 billion. It owns, among other things, media companies Vltava Labe Media and News and Media Holding, the Fortuna Entertainment Group betting company, Dr.Max, Empik, Slovalco and the Penta Hospitals chain, which owns or operates five acute care hospitals, two aftercare hospitals and 25 Alzheimer Home residential social services facilities.
Source: CTK
