Tomáš Budník's Czech industrial fund Tain stripped of its status

Entrepreneur Tomáš Budník, former head of O2 and owner of the Tain Industry group, has run into new trouble: the Czech National Bank has stripped his Tain Private Equity SICAV structure — used to channel investments into industry and railway component manufacturing — of its status as an investment fund.

According to the newspaper Hospodářské noviny, the formal reason for the withdrawal was the loss of a depositary, not an automatic loss of assets or a collapse of the industrial companies involved. The Tain group itself insists this is an administrative and regulatory issue, while the operating companies in the portfolio continue to run as usual.

This is already the second serious setback for Budník's business empire in recent months. Earlier, the group's technology arm, Tain ICT, effectively fell apart: some companies went bankrupt, others were sold off, and the clean-up of that segment was handled by the J&T group, with which Budník had previously jointly controlled the J&T Tain SICAV fund. Of the once sprawling portfolio, only a torso of the former business remains.

The current difficulties concern a different, industrial branch of the group — Tain Industry and the Tain Private Equity SICAV fund, which Tomáš Budník runs together with his son Filip. Tellingly, as recently as the start of the year, representatives of the group insisted that the troubles in the IT segment would not touch the industrial investments.

According to public filings, the fund had planned long-term investments in traditional industry, raising capital from qualified investors. Its Industry sub-fund was meant to invest primarily in controlling stakes in machine-building and railway companies, while also eyeing energy and chemicals as promising directions.

It remains unclear how the regulator's decision will affect the value of investors' assets, or whether the Budníks will manage to stabilize the industrial portfolio amid the group's already battered reputation.