The Pallas Athena Foundations: Real estate investments

The Pallas Athena Foundations were established by the National Bank of Hungary (MNB) to “contribute to the common good” by funding a variety of educational programmes in different fields. Recently, the six foundations have begun to shift their capital from government bonds to real estate.

“As far as our activities on the real estate market are concerned, it is not advisable to make fast moves in this field and we also move forward prudently and make well though-out investments. We have purchased four real estate properties: three office buildings in Budapest and one in Debrecen. Our aim is to make these investments increase the value of the properties in the hands of the foundations,” says Zoltán Fekete, CEO of Optima Plc., the asset management company of the foundations.

The properties in the care of the foundations, supervised by Optima Plc., are of two kinds: some properties have been purchased by the foundations, and some have been donated to them by the MNB. The majority of these properties were buildings in need of renovation. These have been restored and modernized, and they will serve as community spaces such as PhD schools, auditoriums, or libraries.