Polish Billionaire Media Tycoon Wants to Be Debt-Free

Born in Radom, 62 miles south of Warsaw, Zygmunt Krok earned his first money by selling “various stuff,” he says. A neighbor, Feliksa Pietruszka, recalls him peddling candles at the cemetery across from their apartment building. More than four decades and three name changes later, the man now known as Zygmunt Solorz-Zak, 56, has turned his first zlotys into an empire spanning television, mobile phones, a bank, and a power utility.

Solorz-Zak is the second-richest man in Poland, with a fortune of $3.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Assembling it also made him the country’s biggest borrower as he competed with rivals funded by foreign investors.