Eft Elektrik Enerjisi A.S.

The EFT Group is a unique European energy trading and investment concern, with a principal operating focus on the countries of central and south-east Europe, but now extended also to the Baltics and Turkey. EFT continues to be the pioneer trader and innovator in its chosen territory, leading the development of a south-east European electricity market through its trading and investment in new electricity production facilities. EFT was formed in 2000 to exploit considerable market inefficiencies that existed in south-east Europe. The break-up of the former Yugoslavia and the regional conflicts involved had caused the division of a formerly unified electrical region into two zones – a zone belonging to the European-wide UCTE network, and a second zone to the south-east, from Bosnia and Herzegovina to Greece. At that time, the financial positions of most of the relevant regional utilities, combined with poor historical payment of cross-border transactions, meant that significant barriers to trade existed between the main nationally-owned power utilities. Yet significant regional imbalances between production and demand existed, leading to a natural desire to move energy around the region. But there were limited natural matches between the profiles of surplus energy and the demand profiles of consuming countries. Simple bilateral trades were (and remain) highly difficult to construct. Whilst there have been advances in efficiency in the region, improvements in credit quality and the emergence of a more developed market, there continue to be appreciable inefficiencies and no change in the underlying mismatch between generation and demand in different locations. EFT’s ability to analyze, forecast and exploit these regional inefficiencies is foremost amongst all participants in the region’s markets. From its beginnings in 2000 as a trading enterprise, the Group has developed an aim to become the first privately-owned, major electricity producer in the region. A strategic objective is to deliver an appreciable proportion of its trading portfolio from its own energy sources and, as a result, to ensure the long term stability of the Group’s trading operation. The company has since worked very hard to achieve this goal, not through privatisation of the state power sector, but through organic growth and green-field investment.