Ostrava billionaire René Matera dies aged 60

The billionaire businessman René Matera, founder of the Promet Group and one of the two owners of the Tatra Trucks company, passed away on Thursday at the age of 60 following a long battle with a serious illness, the Czech edition of Forbes reported on Friday. He had already stopped actively participating in the management of his 4,200-people-strong company in recent months due to his ailing health and had left the board of directors a year ago, handing the reins over to his daughter Denisa and son Radim.

René Matera's meteoric rise in the business world began in the early 1990s when he started selling blast-furnace slag. He gradually built his company up into a multibillion-dollar group which dealt in everything from iron to engineering and automobiles. He had an estimated net worth of CZK 11.6 billion at the time of his death.