Zygmunt Solorz-Żak

Zygmunt Józef Krok
Zygmunt Solorz-Żak (2013)
Born	August 4, 1956 (1956-08-04) (age 67) Radom
Citizenship	Poland
Spouse	divorced
Children	3

Zygmunt Solorz-Żak (born Zygmunt Józef Krok, August 4, 1956 in Radom) is a Polish businessman and a media tycoon. He is the second richest person in Poland and has repeatedly appeared on Forbes' ranking of the world's billionaires, with an estimated net worth around €5.77 billion. He ranked #688 on the Forbes 2016 with a net worth of US$2.5 billion.

Biography

Early life

According to the media, Zygmunt Solorz-Żak was born in a small city to the south of Warsaw and originally had the surname Krok. In the 1980s, he took the surname Solorz after his first wife. Several years later, after the second marriage, he added the hyphen and became Solorz-Żak.

In his early twenties, he managed to escape closed-off Poland and got to Germany, where he founded a transport company.

Businesses

Solorz-Żak launched the free-to-air commercial TV channel Polsat in 1992, broadcast through satellite, and obtained a national commercial television license in 1993. Since the middle of the 1990s, Polsat has remained one of Poland's biggest television stations. His key assets also include the pay TV platform Cyfrowy Polsat.

He holds controlling stakes in the pension fund PTE Polsat, small life insurer Polisa and retail bank Invest Bank. After winning control over the distressed Elektrim conglomerate, Solorz-Żak obtained operating control over the lignite power plant PAK, ranked among the three largest electricity producers in Poland. He has owned the Śląsk Wrocław football club since 2008 and the Polish mobile phone company Polkomtel since 2011.