Bank business owned by Orbán’s son-in-law is flourishing

István Tiborcz, the prime minister’s son-in-law has now become one of Hungary’s richest men. His latest deals include the real estate project BudaPart, which many state-owned companies will move into shortly, or the purchase of the Belgrade office building complex. He is also a shareholder of Gránit Bank, which is the 8th biggest universal bank today.

Gránit Bank’s soaring success

As Forbes reports, in 2023, Gránit Bank grew above the sector average in all its business target segments and currently manages nearly 190,000 customer accounts. According to the records of the Hungarian National Bank (MNB), more than 18 percent of all new retail accounts were opened with Gránit Bank in 2023. The bank ended the year with a balance sheet total (the sum of all assets) of more than HUF 1.20 billion (EUR 3.1 million), an individual profit of HUF 19 billion (EUR 49.2 million), and a consolidated profit of HUF 21.6 billion (EUR 56 million) after tax.

In 2024, the bank’s balance sheet total grew to HUF 1.4 billion (EUR 3.6 million), and more than 30,000 accounts were opened with the bank in four months. Éva Hegedüs, the bank’s president and CEO told Forbes that they are planning to expand the services of their app, which was originally developed to be a home insurance calculator, as well as issue a credit card.

István Tiborcz’s success in business

As we reported before, in 2023, it was confirmed that Tiborcz is present in the economic sphere with nearly 40 huge real estate projects and a host of other interests, such as financial markets, transport, reinforced concrete, solar parks, waste management, IT and beauty. In 2020, he left Appeninn, a company in which he was a shareholder since he didn’t want to own a company that was competing for state or local government grants. However, he started to increase his private equity funds, which are used to hide the identity of owners.

He and his wife, Ráhel Orbán have tried to hide their ties to the government, with little to no success. For example, last year, the prime minister’s daughter bought 94 hectares of vineyards in the Tokaj wine region for HUF 600 million (EUR 1.6 million). The purchased land is located next to Patrícius wine farm, which is owned by her husband.

As land owner and former right-wing politician, László Bíró exclaimed, „the Hungarian government and the Orbán family want to control everything from tourism to the wine business.” He also referred to the 2017 incident when Lőrinc Mészáros bought the Andrássy Mansion in Tarcal, as he fears that nobody could stop them from expanding their land, not even local farmers who could have made better use of it.

Péter Magyar, the ex-husband of the former Minister of Justice wrote a Facebook post recently regarding the success of Tiborcz, saying that the businessman already has hotels, a bank, fund managers, former state property to his name at the age of 37, when many Hungarians who are talented, educated, and hard-working have no chance in achieving what he has, suggesting that Tiborcz’s success is not just a matter of luck.

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