Benjamin Lakatos has turned the little-known company MET into one of the largest gas traders in just a few years. Now he is investing billions in renewable energy.
Original article: Handelszeitung
Everyone is talking about Glencore, Trafigura, Vitol, Mercuria and Gunvor in Switzerland. Yet in recent years, one commodity trader has mingled almost unnoticed with Europe's largest energy traders: the Baar-based MET Group. The company, which specializes in natural gas trading, has profited massively from the skyrocketing energy prices over the past year. Revenues more than doubled from 18 to 41.5 billion euros. The company is now one of the largest firms in Switzerland by revenue. In the European natural gas business, MET is already one of the largest non-state players.
Good contacts at home
MET is led by the Hungarian founder and trader Benjamin Lakatos. Mr. Lakatos made it big in the noughties on the trading floor of the Hungarian oil giant MOL. He managed to carve out the division from the group on good terms in 2007, using his know-how to make the company successful outside of MOL in the following years.
Whilst MOL retained less than 50 percent of ownership in MET, Lakatos and his team were allowed to continue using the MOL name and received start-up capital of 100,000 euros from the group. But then, suddenly, MOL wanted money for the naming rights. Mr. Lakatos and his team therefore decided to rename the company MET (initially originated from MOL Energy Trading).
In 2010, MET moved to Switzerland. Hungary was and still is a "key market", according to the company. But the reasons for moving were more compelling: low corporate taxes and Swiss neutrality. Mr. Lakatos did not cut his contacts in his Hungarian homeland and in politics because of this, but they were "not decisive". After all, his board chairman Csaba Lantos became the Hungarian energy minister under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at the end of 2022. Since then, Mr. Lakatos has been both CEO and Chairman of MET.
Under him as CEO, MET has gone from strength to strength. The company has so far opened offices in 14 countries and last year traded 67 terawatt hours of electricity and 109 billion cubic meters of gas. Trading is not to be the end of the story: CEO Lakatos also wants to turn the new trading giant into a major producer of renewable energy. To this end, MET Green Assets Holding was registered in Switzerland at the beginning of June. All of MET's renewable energy facilities – for wind and solar, in eight countries – are grouped under this company. MET already produces nearly 400 megawatts of wind and solar power. Another 500 megawatts are under construction. 2 gigawatts of installed capacity are planned by 2026. That is roughly equivalent to the output of two nuclear power plants.
Green energy is finally becoming a business case for the founder: "Thanks to adapted framework conditions and from the point of view of security of supply, this has become a realistic and attractive business sector," says Mr. Lakatos. And MET now has enough money to buy assets for it on a larger scale.
The group is investing almost 2 billion euros in this area. MET is investing half of this amount in a joint venture with the Singaporean conglomerate Keppel, which operates shipyards, builds drilling platforms and is involved in telecommunications and the energy sector. MET will soon be on Keppel's doorstep and will open its own office in Singapore.
But the centre will remain Europe, with headquarters in Switzerland. Mr. Lakatos wants to sell electricity and gas to all types of customers throughout the European continent, in some places also to households, as is already the case in Germany.
Mr. Lakatos certainly has the power for the strategic change to an integrated energy service provider. He owns more than 75 percent of MET, Keppel holds 10 percent, and the remaining shares are held by management.
Mr. Lakatos is taking an opportunistic approach to his acquisitions tour through Europe. Switzerland, Germany, Italy and Spain are his main focus. The Group is interested in large assets for sale, for example gas-fired power plants as well as infrastructure for grid balancing, storage facilities, pipelines and, in the future, perhaps its own LNG tankers.
Acquisition in France
In France, Mr. Lakatos has set his sights on a "medium-sized acquisition" in the near future. To this end, the company is primarily looking at portfolios from the SME sector and is "in contact with well-known companies" that play a major role in the French market. Greece is also in focus. MET already supplies LNG there.
And it will not stop there. Lakatos could also imagine investments in Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan "in the course of our expansion towards Asia”. Turkmenistan in particular is something of a holy grail for the gas industry because it has very large natural gas reserves. What Mr. Lakatos is not aiming for, on the other hand, is to become a number one in any one country. "We prefer to be the challenger, a number three or four in the market." Along the lines of being present in several countries and somewhat smaller instead of being a very big player in a few markets, which would require the company to do more lobbying. "Our strength is in financial optimization of assets."
For the founder of gas trader MET Group, Benjamin Lakatos, Europe is not out of the woods when it comes to energy supply: "If the winter gets extremely cold, we could still get a nasty surprise." If Asia also returns to the market as a big buyer, "then we could see a price shock." And there are two other challenges:
Renewables – plenty of wind and solar power leads to surpluses in the grid, which must be balanced with storage and infrastructure. That will be expensive: extra investments on the scale of 50 percent of all investments in renewable energies are necessary for this.
LNG – The Middle East is a very important LNG supplier for Europe. But Mr. Lakatos warns against relying on just one source. His advice: "A balanced gas supply mix that includes all players."