“The Investment and Foreign Operations Division is one of the key components of our agency. Therefore, I’m pleased that we got a great professional with an exceptional vision, extensive expertise and a proven ability to guide a transformation,” say Jan Michal, CEO of CzechInvest. Michal believes that René Samek will help to convince international companies to invest in Czechia not only in the area of production, but also in research and development, which is absolutely essential for the country’s future competitiveness.

At the same time, Jan Michal thanked Gabriela Bauerová, who had served as the acting director of the division. Bauerová can now fully focus on her position as head of the Investment Development Department, which she had continued to hold over the past year and a half while also serving as the acting director of the entire division

René Samek is a long-time employee of the agency. Among other things, he served as the director of CzechInvest’s foreign office for Great Britain and Ireland in London from 1997 to 2007 and later headed the Investment and Applied Research Support Division. He returned to CzechInvest in 2020. Samek will assume his new position on 1 September 2025, having until then served as the head of the Innovation Department, where he has been involved in supporting innovative companies and creating a favorable environment for them in the Czech Republic.

“I was here at the turn of the millennium, when Czechia was the most sought-after destination for foreign investments in Central and Eastern Europe and CzechInvest was named the best European state investment-support agency three consecutive times. My ambition is to duplicate that era of success, but this time with strong emphasis on knowledge, innovation and higher value added,” says René Samek.

According to Samek, the future of large strategic investments in the Czech Republic is based on a sophisticated environment that combines a well-educated workforce, research, development and multidisciplinary cooperation across industrial sectors.
“Foreign-owned companies have been the biggest investors in research and development in Czechia for many years, and they often invest here repeatedly. This is proof that they are successful here. I believe that together we can create better conditions to make our country just as attractive to high-tech investors as it is to manufacturing companies,” Samek adds.

René Samek graduated with degrees in information services from Charles University in Prague, international relations and European studies from Central European University in Prague and Budapest, and political economy from the London School of Economics. In addition to CzechInvest, he worked for three years at the American property-development company AIG Lincoln and ten years at the International Clinical Research Centre at St. Anne’s University Hospital in Brno, where he was responsible for international research cooperation, technology transfer, and PR and marketing.

René has experience with economic-development and investment-support projects implemented with support from the EU, the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Columbia University in New York. He has worked on such projects in the Balkans, Eastern Europe, the United Arab Emirates and several African countries.

Since 2024, René has been involved in the international EXCEED – Excellence in Green and Digital Manufacturing project focused on the development of skills in advanced manufacturing sectors in Czechia, Finland, Italy, Spain and Greece.