Bloomberg: Koch to Start EU Power Trading as It Plans LNG Expansion

Koch Supply & Trading, a unit of Koch Industries Inc., will start buying and selling European electricity and expand its liquefied natural gas business to take advantage of a globalizing market for the fuel.

The trading unit of the second-largest closely held U.S. company by revenue is hiring one or two power traders in Geneva and plans to be ready for trading next year, Stephen Cornish, director of Koch Supply & Trading, said in a telephone interview from London. The company will expand into Turkey and the Caspian region in 2015 and open an office in Tokyo for its LNG business this year, he said by phone.

Koch is expanding in power as companies from Bank of America Corp. to Cargill Inc. pull out of the market as prices trade near a nine-year low after the euro region’s longest recession cut demand. As many as 120 European power and gas traders lost or changed their jobs last year in the biggest shakeout of the industry since the collapse of Enron Corp. more than a decade ago.
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