Billionaire Ordered to Transfer Polish Media Empire to Kids
(Bloomberg) -- A Liechtenstein court said billionaire Zygmunt Solorz must hand over his Polish media empire to his three children, dismissing his appeal to block the succession in the latest chapter of a feud roiling the family business.
Shares in Cyfrowy Polsat SA, the key holding controlled by the family which runs one of Poland’s biggest TV networks, jumped as much as 11% on Tuesday, its biggest daily advance in 16 months.
The Principality’s High Court said that the billionaire “validly transferred” his founders’ rights to his offspring in August 2024. The court rejected Solorz’s appeal against a May ruling about the succession, Cyfrowy said, citing a document it got from TiVi Foundation, its major shareholder. The ruling is final and binding, according to the statement.
The succession drama centers around two Liechtenstein-registered family foundations which effectively control Solorz’s sprawling business empire, spanning media telecommunication and energy, built from scratch since the early 1990s. Solorz had a fortune of about $2.3 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
“The succession process in the family foundations established by our father, Zygmunt Solorz, initiated many years ago and finalized in August 2024, has finally taken place,” Aleksandra Zak, Tobias Solorz and Piotr Zak said in a statement. “Active ownership and supervision remains in the hands of the family – the three of us, his children.”
The children said they will focus on building value for shareholders.
Family Planning
The dispute erupted after a family gathering last year, when Solorz and his children discussed a long-planned succession amid concerns about billionaire’s deteriorating health. Solorz initially agreed to transfer control of his two foundations to the children, but later tried to reverse the decision, claiming he had been misled.
The legal battle has attracted a lot of public attention and has weighed on Solorz’s business. Cyfrowy Polsat’s shares are still down 15% this year this year compared with a 44% gain for on Warsaw’s WIG20 index. Liechtenstein-based TiVi Foundation holds 69.13% of the voting rights in the company, worth about $1.3 billion.
Earlier this year, Solorz took the case to a US federal court to help recover his fortune. In early December he was also in Washington, DC., meeting “high-ranking US officials” to discuss space exploration projects, according to emailed comments from a representative for the patriarch. The succession battle even drew the attention of Donald Trump Jr.
Solorz “fundamentally disagrees” with the ruling that is now under “a detailed legal review,” his legal adviser Radoslaw Kwasnicki said by email. “We reserve the right to pursue all legal options, including filing a complaint with Liechtenstein’s Constitutional Tribunal,” he said.
Cyfrowy said in the statement that the end of legal dispute should allow company to concentrate on executing its strategy.
“With the succession issue seemingly resolved, investors will now focus on what Solorz’s children plan to do with his businesses, especially whether they pursue a broader overhaul to improve Cyfrowy’s cashflow,” Wood & Co. an analyst Piotr Raciborski said by phone.
Defending the company’s customer base amid intensifying competition from fiber-optic providers is likely to be a priority, he added. Raciborski also wants clarity on the group’s renewable-energy targets and the future of its hydrogen business, which isn’t contributing to profits.
(Adds share moves as well as comments from an analyst, the Solorz family and the patriarch’s representative starting in the second paragraph.)
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