News

Home Credit, the consumer lender backed by Czech billionaire Petr Kellner’s PPF group, is likely to delaying its $1.5 billion Hong Kong initial public offering to next year, Bloomberg reports.

Home Credit was targeting a market capitalization of as much as $11 billion, but some investors it approached thought the company should be valued at even half that, the news agency said, citing unnamed sources.

Kellner, the richest man in the Czech Republic, in February scrapped a plan to sell Home Credit’s Czech and Slovak businesses to rival Moneta Money Bank.

The Office for the Protection of Competition (ÚOHS) has confirmed a fine of 8.34 million crowns against Booking.com over its contracts with hotels and other accommodation providers.

The ÚOHS said that by obliging hotels to offer more favourable rates to people using Booking.com than they could through competing portals, the company had engaged in anti-competitive practices.

Monday is the 30th anniversary of the start of protests in Teplice, North Bohemia that took place just days before the Prague demonstration that sparked the Velvet Revolution. People chanted “We want to live!” in response to appalling pollution that frequently left the industrial city covered by a blanket of noxious air.

The environmental protests, which were initially called by a teenage apprentice, led to clashes with the police, who used a water cannon in a bid to disperse the crowd. They ran from November 11 to 13.

The Czech Republic’s European Commissioner, Věra Jourová, has come out against a statement by French President Emanuel Macron that NATO is “brain dead”. Speaking on Czech Television on Sunday, Ms. Jourová said everything that caused the Kremlin to celebrate should be eschewed, adding that she the European Union must make itself heard more within NATO.

Speaking on the same programme, the Czech former chairman of the NATO Military Committee, Petr Pavel, said Mr. Macron’s words had disrupted unity within the alliance.