The publicity-shy founder of Poland’s second-biggest supermarket chain is the country’s richest Pole for the third year running, according to a rich-list compiled by a leading Polish magazine.
To qualify for Wprost weekly’s rich list this year, a person does not quite need to be a zloty billionaire (€1 billion zlotys = €230 million), but it helps. The 100th on the list earns 732 million zlotys (€172 mln), which is up some 10% more than you needed last year.
Tomasz Biernacki, the 50-year-old man behind the Dino chain, tops the 2024 list with an overall wealth of 20 billion zlotys, which is down a billion euros over 12 months.
His 20 billion zlotys makes up a decent chunk of the total wealth of 253 billion zlotys owned by the richest 100 Poles, according to the magazine.
The total wealth of the top 100 works out at around 12% of the total assets of all Poles in 2023, as calculated by the Association of Polish Banks.
Biernacki shies away from publicity, living on the edge of Krotoszyn, a small town in the west of the country, off the major transport routes. He has only made the front pages once, back in 2008, when he ended up in hospital after crashing his Ferrari.
His official bio on the Dino webpage gives few details of his education or his upbringing.
He opened his first shop in 1999 in Gostyn, less than an hour from his hometown, along with his brother Wojciech. After private equity firm Enterprise Investors took a 49% share in 2006, the business grew rapidly.
Launched on the Warsaw stock market in 2017, the Dino group now boasts just under 2,500 shops, with 250 new outlets appearing in 2023 and a further 32 opened in the first quarter of 2024, according to the company’s financial reports.
This makes Dino the second largest retailer in Poland by number of shops, ahead of Lidl with 900 but trailing market leader Biedronka, which has 3,500.
Dino tends to shy away from big cities, preferring to open outlets in smaller towns across Poland.
The company’s first quarter report gives warning, however, that 2024 is not like the times of the pandemic, when Dino sales grew 88% in a year. Costs are up and profit margins are down due to a price war between the biggest chains.
Others on the rich list include the two heirs of the fortune of tycoon Jan Kulczyk: Dominik and Sebastian (5th and 6th place); TV and telecoms magnate Zygmunt Solorz (8th); and the man who wants to kickstart the Polish nuclear program with small modular reactors, Michał Sołowow (no. 3), who has interests ranging from plastics to flooring.
The 10th spot is occupied by Rafał Broszka, the founder of package locker chain, InPost.
The full rich list is as follows:
Tomasz Biernacki
Jerzy Starak
Michał Sołowow
Paweł Marchewka
Sebastian Kulczyk
Dominika Kulczyk
Zbigniew and Mateusz Juroszek
Zygmunt Solorz
Łukasz Nosek
Rafał Brzoska
