History

Expandia today

Expandia sees its investment priorities in two basic fields. The first one focuses on industrial investments emphasizing new and creative approaches, inovative technologies, projects with a high growth potential and enterprises producing a high added value. In terms of industrial investments, Expandia often considers from-scratch projects (START - UP), beginning and fast develpoing projects (EARLY STAGE), and restructuralisation projects. The second category of projects contains real estate projects, where Expandia focuses on building of rentable administrative projects, residential buildings, logistic or hotel projects. We also deal with industrial real estate investments, especially as far as logistics is concerned.

History of the Expandia group

First companies of the Expandia group were founded in the first half of the 1990s. During its activity, Expandia reached significant achievements especially in terms of those investment opportunities that require a fast reaction, a high level of concentration and an unconventional approach. The company identified such opportunities for example during the process of privatisation, the creation of a secondary stock market and the initial development of other financial products in the transforming economies of Central European countries.

Expandia group's position in the process of privatisation

By means of its subsidiary companies and administered funds, Expandia acted an important role during the early stages of the development of the privatised assets administration field. Especially Investiční společnost Expandia, a.s. in the Czech Republic and Expandia Invest, d.o.o. in the Republic of Croatia acquired a confidence of a total of more than 400 thousand participants and shareholders and belonged to the most succesful funds of the region in the 1990s.

Expandia in the financial sector

In the 1990s, companies of the Expandia group dealt actively in stocks and bonds in Central European markets. Especially Expandia Finance in the Czech Republic ranked among the most active traders. However, as the number of publicly traded securities issues significantly decreased in the second half of the 1990s, this activity stopped being attractive for the group and the dealing in registered securities was therefore ended.

Under the name Expandia Banka, a.s., in 1997 the group started a project of the 1st bank in Central Europe specialised in providing of direct and Internet banking services. The project was awarded with a number of inland and abroad prestigeous prizes. In 2000, Expandia sold its share in the bank to Česká pojišťovna, a.s. - the greatest inland insurance company. Since 2001, the bank, whose number of clients reached over 150 thousand, had been operating in the market under the name eBanka, a.s. In 2007 eBanka became a part of Raiffeisen group in which it has fully merged in 2008. 

In 1995, Expandia became one of the co-founders of Penzijní fond Koruna, a.s. During the first four years of its existence, it gained more than 100 thousand insured people and got ranked among the top ten of additional pension insurance funds. In 1999, Expandia sold its share in the fund, which is a part of the pension fund of Česká pojišťovna, a.s. group today.

Restructuralisation

During the years passed, it was possible to find a number of investment opportunities in companies requiring financial, product and manager restucturalisation. Expandia managed to get several companies with existing competitive advantages, where the product portfolio was simplified, the costs were cut and the balances were recovered under our direct control.

While in some of the owned companies Expandia supports a long-term growth strategy (Jitona, a.s. Soběslav), other companies restructuralised by Expandia were sold to strategic investors (e.g. Vigona, a.s. Svitavy, Ton, a.s. Bystřice pod Hostýnem)

In all projects, Expandia always promotes a creative approach, flexibility and a high level of the management professionality.