Many of these are not earlier emigrés or their offspring, but people who have arrived straight from Hungary. László Urbán, managing director of the Hungarian National Bank (MNB), who worked as a middle manager at Citycorp for four and a half years from 2000, remembers that there were regular meetings of some 20 to 30 Hungarian businessmen, bankers and students in Manhattan, arranged by the Hungarian consulate-general.
Erste Bank Hungary was the only bank in this country that would
confirm that it had employees who had been sent abroad. But even this
was to be seen as a kind of training.
"The reason there are so few Hungarians in the financial world is that
between 1949 and 1986 there was no real banking system here. After
1989, however, there was so much banking work around that there was no
point in going abroad," said György Surányi, who twice served as MNB
president. He is currently the higheset-ranking Hungarian banker
abroad. As chairman of the CEE subsidiary of the largest Italian
financial house, Banca Intensa (BCI), he is responsible for six
institutions in the region, including CIB Bank.
"I'm proud to be the highest-ranking non-elected official from the CEE
region at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development," said
Péter Reininger. The 59-year-old was the 42nd staff member at the
bank, joining four months after it was established in April 1991. A
deputy minister for industry in 1989, he is director of the bank's
energy and telecommunications division.
Miklós Kormos, a co-founder of Wallis Rt., is also regarded as an
influential figure in the City. The 40-year-old left JP Morgan this
September after 13 years at the bank and set up a consultancy firm in
London specialising in helping CEE companies with finance. Kormos has
thus far done bet out of his consultancy with the dominant companies
on the Budapest Stock Exchange. He helped Mol and OTP with their
foreign expansions, and also advised Richter Gedeon on its issues of
share-convertible bonds.
