Company of PM Orban’s son-in-law buys 57% stake in Hungary’s Granit Bank

BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Hungarian real estate holding company BDPST Zrt, owned by Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s son-in-law, is buying a 57% stake in small lender Granit Bank, BDPST said on Thursday.

BDPST bought the stake from a Hungarian consulting firm, E.P.M., which is controlled by Granit Bank’s Chair and Chief Executive Officer Eva Hegedus according to the bank’s 2020 earnings report on the bank’s website.

BDPST did not disclose how much it paid in the deal. Granit Bank has a balance sheet totalling close to 700 billion forints ($2.14 billion), and handles around 80,000 customer accounts. The transaction is pending approval by the National Bank of Hungary.

BDPST, in a statement on its website, said it supported Granit Bank’s strategy as a long-term financial investor and planned to increase the bank’s capital.

BDPST was founded by Orban’s son-in-law Istvan Tiborcz in 2015 and over the past few years has built up a portfolio of prime real estate in Budapest and nationwide, including hotels and mansion houses, as well as ski hotels in Austria.

Tiborcz was listed as Hungary’s 37th wealthiest person in a list of the 100 richest people in the country, compiled by Hungarian journalist Peter Szakonyi earlier this year. Tiborcz married Orban’s daughter Rahel Orban in 2013.

“The purchase of Granit Bank meets all the conditions that are important to us as it is a future-oriented investment for the long term,” Tiborcz said in the statement published on the company’s website.

($1 = 326.7500 forints)

(Reporting by Krisztina Than; Editing by Susan Fenton)