What’s Boosting the World’s Best-Performing Stock?

Sales at Hungarian conglomerate Konzum Nyrt. dropped 99 percent last year, its short-term debt ballooned sevenfold, and it cut its staff by 86 percent. This year? Konzum has the world’s best-performing stock, its shares soaring more than fiftyfold on the Budapest exchange at one point. The company has a market value of about $142 million. “Maybe I’m smarter” than Mark Zuckerberg, said Lorinc Meszaros, a former gas fitter who in February sparked the rally when he bought a 20 percent stake in Konzum, speaking to reporters that month.

Or maybe Meszaros has better friends. A former schoolmate of Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, he’s mayor of their hometown a half-hour’s drive from Budapest and president of a sprawling soccer academy Orban founded near his weekend house. Since 2014, Meszaros’s wealth has increased fifteenfold, making him Hungary’s fifth-richest citizen, according to financial website Napi.hu, with an estimated net worth of $460 million. His businesses range from construction to wineries. The private commercial broadcaster RTL Klub, which has clashed with the government, calculated that in 2016, companies linked with Meszaros and his family won 225 billion forint ($858 million) in public procurement contracts. In a 2014 interview with the weekly Heti Valasz, Meszaros credited hard work plus “God, luck, and Viktor Orban” for his fortune.