Top Expat CEOs In Hungary 2022 Sample

Top Expat

CEOS In Hungary 2022

The most influential expat CEOs in the Hungarian economy

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Opening Opening Opening a business a business a business doesn’t doesn’t doesn’t make you make you make you a businessman. a businessman. a businessman.

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FDI in Hungary Through the Prism of the Recent Past Since its establishment in 2014, the Hungarian Investment Promotion Agency (HIPA) has delivered a performance that has made it a regional heavyweight among investment promotion agencies. The figures speak for themselves; annual investment

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volume has risen every year except 2015 and the pandemic-ravaged 2020.

Eight years of tireless negotiations and client-focused service resulted in 1,822 closed deals, nearly EUR 30 billion in investments, and close to 116,000 new jobs all over Hungary. It is worth taking a closer look at how those numbers have evolved in terms of investment volume and sectoral distribution, and what countries secured the highest number of projects or contributed the most to job

creation. 2021, which delivered all-timehighs, surely deserves special attention.

The year was a record-breaking one in terms of FDI volume in Hungary: HIPA closed deals worth close to EUR 5.9 bln. More than half of the investment volume of the 96 large FDI deals stemmed from South Korea, which became the number one investing nation in Hungary for the

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second time after 2019. In general, Asian investors’ accelerating activity levels continued, as their total annual investment volume share of 47% in 2020 surged to 60% in 2021.

The all-time high investment volume materialized in 422 projects that created 14,000 new jobs. Of those, 96 large FDI projects completed throughout the year represented investments of EUR 5.3 bln

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Boardroon Roundtable: Elections and the Economy The following is an edited version of a roundtable discussion on the economy and the upcoming general election, featuring Tamás Lőcsei, country managing partner at PwC Hungary, Károly Radnai, managing partner of Anderson Hungary and head of the tax committee at AmCham Hungary, and Dr. Ildikó Taksz, KPMG partner, head of business consulting, and head of the financial services sector.

Questions were asked by Robin Marshall, editor-in-chief of the Budapest Business Journal. Please note that the conversation was held before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Robin Marshall: I’d like to set some context for our conversation. Let’s start with your expectations for the business year in 2022. What are we looking at in terms of GDP for Hungry? Is there any evidence at all, negative or positive, that an election

year has any impact on the economy for that year? Or is the simple truth that in a period of rising inflation, quantitative tightening, the ongoing pandemic, there are so many things out there that the election is neither here nor there?

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Tamás Lőcsei: I believe that we will have a better than expected year overall. I am very happy to see that the pandemic is almost over, at least for most of us. I am very happy that European countries are giving up on

CEO Survey

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TOP EXPAT CEOS

Trust is the Golden Thread Thru PwC’s Silver Jubilee CEO Survey The results of PwCs annual Hungarian CEO survey were due out in late March, too late for the print deadline of this publication. However, the 25th global CEO survey “Reimagining The Outcomes That Matter” was published in January and includes trends that local leaders will surely mirror. These are some of the main talking points.

By Robin Marshall The 4,446 CEOs who responded to the 25th annual global CEO survey in October and November of 2021 came from 89 countries and territories. They were optimistic about continued economic resilience while acknowledging threats, uncertainties and tensions. Climate change and the continuing coronavirus pandemic loom large. Significantly,

because of when the survey was taken, the crisis in Ukraine is not mentioned.

“CEOs are most worried about the potential for a cyberattack or macroeconomic shock to undermine the achievement of their company’s financial goals – the same goals that most executive compensation packages are still tied to. And they are less concerned about challenges, like climate change and social inequality, that appear to pose

smaller immediate threats to revenue,” PwC says of its research. “For example, just 22% of survey respondents have made net-zero commitments (though the largest companies in our sample are further along).”

One critical thread that runs through this silver jubilee survey is the significance of trust. [Editor’s note: for more on this, see the comments of PwC Hungary CEO Tamás Lőcsei in our Boardroom Roundtable feature on pages 15-24.]

“We found that highly trusted companies are more likely to have made net-zero commitments and to have tied their CEO’s compensation to nonfinancial outcomes, such as employee engagement scores and gender diversity in the workforce,” PwC notes.

“Correlation is not causation, and we’ll continue to explore these results. But at first blush, they suggest a relationship between trust and the ability to drive change —a means of moving beyond short-term, ‘it’s the next leader’s problem’ thinking.”

NEAR-TERM OPTIMISM PwC says CEO optimism has remained stable and high: 77% said they expect global economic growth to improve during the year ahead, the highest figure on record since 2012, when the Big Four firm began asking CEOs how they felt about the economy’s potential.

Among the CEOs expressing “more tepid” outlooks are those in the automotive (46%) and hospitality and leisure sectors (44%), which are battling semiconductor

CEOS RANK CYBER RISKS AS THE TOP THREAT TO GROWTH, WITH HEALTH RISKS CLOSE BEHIND Question: How concerned are you about the following global threats negatively impacting your company over

Cyber risks

49%

Health risks

48%

Macroeconomic volatility

43% 33%

Climate change

32%

the next 12 months?

(Showing only ‘very concerned’ and ‘extremely concerned’ reponses.)

Social inequality

18% Source: PwC 25th Annual Global CEO Survey

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Need to Meet Face-to-face not a Passing Trend but Human Nature

Zsolt Kassai has recently been voted the Most Influential Meeting Service Provider in New Europe by Kongres magazine. How can we remain creative and resilient in the most challenging of times? Are we going virtual, or do we still crave live meetings?

The CEO of Special Effects Ltd. predicts the future of the events industry.

“The entire industry and our company have been dealt a severe blow by the current situation. In the course of a week, we have received a tremendous number of event cancelations both

abroad and domestically. I and many of my colleagues are still working on solutions that will hopefully prevent the worst from happening. I would like to ask for your disciplined cooperation and

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support,” reads the letter the CEO sent to the 150-plus employees of Special Effects on March 3, 2020.

Two years ago, industry professionals had to deal with the fact that they could no

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Hotel Corvinus Turns 30, Kempinski Celebrates 125th Anniversary Two notable birthdays will be marked this year by general manager Stephan Interthal and his team at the Kempinski Hotel Corvinus Budapest. The Budapest Business Journal asked him about celebration plans and what lies ahead.

By Robin Marshall BBJ: The Kempinski group is 125 years old. How is the group planning on marking this anniversary?

Stephan Interthal: There will be 125year events throughout the course of the year in all Kempinski hotels

worldwide. The actual date of the company’s “birth” is April 5. Kempinski Hotel Corvinus Budapest and I will have the privilege to welcome our CEO, Bernold Schröder, on this day, and we will be holding a small reception marking this extraordinary birthday of our unique group of hotels.

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BBJ: More immediately for us, Hotel Corvinus Budapest is 30 years old.

How will you celebrate this?

SI: As the 30th birthday of Kempinski Hotel Corvinus Budapest coincides with 125 years of Kempinski, we will be starting a series of smaller events from April all the way to September,

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