Orbán’s closest friend silently admitted being one of the richest people in Hungary

G7.24.hu reports that Lőrinc Mészáros, along with his family, is probably one of the wealthiest people in Hungary. According to the estimation, former mayor of Felcsút, and his wife and children possess as much money (if not more) as the entire fortune of Sándor Csányi, who has been on the top of the list for years. However, the sum of the Mészáros family’s money is added up only from their stocks, not mentioning other goods.

This means that Hungary has another billionaire besides OTP leader Sándor Csányi. Today, one needs to have about 260 billion forints (about 84 million euros) to make it to the list.

Mészáros‘s wealth grew abruptly. His childhood friend, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, announced on Friday that

Lőrinc Mészáros and his wife now own the firm Konzum PE Magántőkealap.

Notably, this investment has a considerable share in the biggest companies of the stock market empire, which already are owned by Mészáros.

It was already known that the Mészáros family might be one of the investors in Konzum PE, but the official ownership was not clarified until now because it is not compulsory to make it public.

Konzum Nyrt, that handles the capital investment, was allowed to announce the news only because Mészáros released the directory from the trade secret.

The announcement clarified the ownership of the company empire’s (also called as the “Mészáros Group”) stock market part. Based on the Budapest Stock Exchange’s data, g7.24.hu estimated how much stock value the Mészáros family may own.

As for Friday the 4th of May 2018, the Mészáros family owns 70 percent of Opus Nyrt, 60 percent of Konzum Nyrt, and 37 percent of Appeninn Nyrt. The estimated value of these was about 208 billion forints (about 670 million euros) according to the closing exchange rate on Friday. This excludes, however, the tranche that Opus Nyrt will give to Mészáros for handing over his companies. It was announced in February that the billionaire was going to exchange some of his companies for Opus papers. Based on the data from that time, he will receive further 100-130 million stocks worth 70-90 billion forints (about 226-290 million euros). All in all,

Lőrinc Mészáros and his family own 180-300 billion forints (580-968 million euros) only from their companies registered by the Budapest Stock Exchange.

Talking about stocks, their value is constantly changing, of course. A one percent change of Opus stocks can cause a billion forints (about 3.2 million euros) difference. A similar change of Konzum would make a 400 million forints (about 1.3 million euros) difference.

On the other hand, stock papers make only part of Mészáros’s wealth. He exchanges only parts of his two biggest building industry companies for the 70-90 billiard forints (about 226-290 billion euros) block of shares. These companies are Mészáros és Mészáros Kft and R-Kord Kft, and they are getting many purchase orders from the government. Mészáros keeps 49 percent of each that adds other 10 millions of forints (ten thousands of euros) to his fortune. Additionally, his lands, other private capital investments, other goods, football teams, and investments abroad have not even been mentioned. G7.24.hu states that

it would not be surprising if the Mészáros family’s total fortune were much more than the value of their stock papers.

For comparison, Sándor Csányi was considered to be the most wealthy Hungarian person with an estimated 260 billion (840 million euros, according to napi.hu) or 294.3 billion forints (about 950 million euros, according to Forbes.hu) in the previous year. Napi.hu ranked László Bige as the second richest person with 200 billion forints (about 645 million euros) while forbes.hu put Sándor Demján on the second place with 192 billion forints (about 620 million euros). Notably,

Lőrinc Mészáros only owned about a hundred million forints (about 320,000 euros) in 2010, and 8.4 billion forints (about 27 million euros) in 2015.

Featured image: www.facebook.com/MészárosLőrinc-vállalkozó

Source: g7.24.hu