Petrescu, his wife and his son and some friends of his family died on 3 October 2021 following an airplane crash on San Donato Milanese, near Milan, in Italy.
[1] After ending his studies at the Politehnica University of Bucharest, Petrescu married and emigrated to West Germany in the 1980s, starting a business in the domain of automobiles in the country.
In West Germany, Petrescu met the Romanian businessman and now former tennis player Ion Țiriac, with whom he began to collaborate in tennis-related businesses.
Eventually, both businessmen split their ways, with Petrescu starting his own business in real estate and car distribution, thus managing to amass a great fortune.
[4] Petrescu was notable for his confidentiality and for how little was known about him,[5][2][3] this being the reason why he was sometimes called the "shadow billionaire" (Romanian: miliardarul din umbră).
His companies built dozens of shopping centers, some of which operated Auchan, Carrefour, Metro AG and Real stores.
[9][10] Following the airplane crash, it was announced that the Romanian businesswoman Anca Surugiu, who had been an assistant and coordinator for all of Petrescu's companies, would take over his fortune.