Manager Pavel Čechal became the executive director of PBS Group in early 2023. He left the company, which mainly produces jet aircraft engines and auxiliary power units for airplanes and helicopters, in July 2025.
At the end of August, he joined the board of directors of AviaNera Technologies from Michal Strnad’s CSG group, and in September became its executive director. Together with Čechal, four other former PBS Group employees transferred to CSG.
AviaNera Technologies (ANT), like PBS Group, is involved in the development and production of small jet engines. Through it, CSG bought the Serbian developer of these engines, MUST Technologies, last November.
“We want to acquire top technologies and know-how in the field of propulsion units, which are a key component and often a bottleneck in the development and production of modern unmanned vehicles,” said CSG owner Michal Strnad.
PBS Group, however, believes that their former employees brought know-how to Strnad’s group. “From the available information, it appears that you provided the ANT company, or the CSG group, with the above-described protected information related to the products that PBS designs, manufactures and offers to its customers for a long time,” states the pre-lawsuit summons, which PBS Group addressed to its former employees and which the editors had the opportunity to view.
According to the document, Čechal contacted the supplier as well as its former and current customers with requests for parts that correspond to parts used by PBS Group in the production of the TJ150 engine mounted in high-speed unmanned aircraft and defense systems.
“Such requests have even been made using the original PBS-created codebook (which is only available to PBS employees). The matching of the parts requested by ANT with the PBS engine parts is almost 100%,” reads the call.
According to the company, the former PBS employees may have violated their employment contracts and non-disclosure agreements and committed industrial rights and trade secret violations, among other things.
“Through the law firm, we have sent letters to former employees warning them to avoid conduct that could be illegal given their previous work commitments,” says PBS Group Marketing Director Monika Hrubalová.
The invitations, which were processed by the Prague law firm Pokorný, Wagner and partners, were sent by PBS Group in November. The company did not answer the question about the reaction of the addressees and possible further steps towards them.
“Circumstances require us to act. We have to prove to our customers and also to our employees that we protect our technology, our know-how and trade secrets. We do not want to communicate more about this sensitive matter,” states Hrubalová.
CSG: the allegations are baseless
According to CSG group spokesman Andrej Čírtek, not only several former employees of PBS Group, who now work in Strand’s company, but also the CSG group itself received pre-trial summonses. CSG rejected the allegations. “Claims about infringement of industrial rights or misuse of trade secrets are unfounded and we will respond to them accordingly,” wrote Čírtek.
According to Čírtek, more than twenty experts from different companies and countries work at AviaNera today, and only individuals in this team have previous professional experience from the PBS Group.
“The Avia Nera company develops its own technical solutions and designs, which we consider to be technologically superior and unique in the given segment. It also recently transparently communicated how it acquired its know-how in the field of propulsion units for UAS (at this point we refer to the communication of the acquisition of the company MUST Solutions). The CSG Group is convinced that all its activities are carried out in accordance with valid legal regulations and fair business practices,” said the spokesperson.
“We consider the pre-lawsuit challenges, as well as their unofficial provision to the media, to be a purposeful and unethical effort to make life unpleasant for former employees and to discourage any other people interested in a professional change. We are sorry for the way in which these people are publicly or privately slandered without evidence,” added Čírtek, adding that the competitive struggle should “be conducted fairly through the quality of products and services for the customer, not through lawyers who they push baseless pre-trial calls to the media”.
Strained relationships
Relations between CSG and PBS Group, which is owned by Czech-American businessman William Didden, have been strained for several years. Strnad wanted to buy PBS Group in 2024, which the owner of the engineering group refused.
There was then speculation in some media as to who the real owner of PBS Group was, to which the company responded by issuing an unusual press release informing the public of CSG’s offer. PBS Group director Petr Kádner commented on the matter a few months later in an interview for SZ Byznys.
“We told the company that we don’t know where it’s all going, and if they want something, let them write it down. They did, we presented it to the owner and we also asked some of our customers. They indicated to us that it wouldn’t be a good idea and that some business relationships wouldn’t be possible to develop as before. So we turned down the offer with thanks,” said Kádner last May regarding speculation about the takeover.
