Granit Bank, a Hungarian financial institution whose main shareholder is Viktor Orban’s son-in-law, will start operating in Romania starting this year. It is the first time that the digital bank is entering a foreign market. Granit Bank will make available to customers accounts in lei and forints through an application in Romanian, Hungarian and English.Granit Bank will offer cross-border digital banking services in Romania starting from Q3 2024, marking its entry into the foreign market, intellinews publication reported. Granit Bank was registered for the provision of services by the central banks of Hungary and Romania.
The launch of the services marks the beginning of Granit Bank’s expansion abroad. Granit Bank has a total of 200,000 users in Hungary. Granit Bank CEO Eva Hegedus said that the dynamic growth of recent years has provided a stable basis for international expansion with innovative and flexible services. Granit Bank is the eighth largest universal bank in Hungary, with total assets of EUR 3.56 billion, marking a two-fold increase in two years.
The digital bank, dubbed as the Hungarian Revolut, was established in 2010 by construction industry magnate Sandor Demjan to help local SMEs recover from the global financial and economic crisis. It was the first banking institution in Hungary to adopt digital services.
In 2021, Hungarian real estate holding company BDPST, owned by Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s son-in-law, bought a 57 percent stake in Granit Bank, according to Reuters. BDPST bought the stake from a Hungarian consulting firm, which is controlled by Granit Bank’s president and CEO Eva Hegedus, according to the bank’s 2020 results report published on the bank’s website.
BDPST was founded by Orban’s son-in-law Istvan Tiborcz in 2015, and in recent years has built a portfolio of prime real estate in Budapest and across the country, including hotels and villas, as well as ski hotels in Austria. Tiborcz was listed as the 37th richest person in Hungary in a list of the country’s 100 richest people as of 2021. Tiborcz married Orban’s daughter Rahel Orban in 2013.
The post Granit Bank, Owned by Viktor Orban’s Son-in-Law, Expands to Romania appeared first on The Romania Journal.
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