Fight for the biggest Hungarian opposition paper: awaiting foreign investors?
As we already reported, the final edition of the daily, Magyar Nemzet, one of the few outlets to run critical stories before the election, was published on April 11. In fact, the paper belonged to Lajos Simicska, former ally now one of the biggest adversaries of PM Orbán. Currently, Hungarian green party LMP’s board member Péter Ungár is searching for Australian, Israeli and Spanish investors to buy the paper – according to zoom.hu.
A Hungarian billionaire who cannot access his fortune
Interestingly, Ungár is the son of Mária Schmidt, director of the House of Terror Museum. Schmidt, as a prominent member of Fidesz, turned against PM Orbán after his defeat in the 2006 elections. However, Orbán forgave her, and she could remain in position.
Together with his son they
inherited a marvellous fortune
after the death of András Ungár, owner of the Budapest Property Utilization and Development Public Limited Company. However, the amount of Péter Ungár’s spendable money is very limited since most of his fortune is in stocks.
Thus, he tries to involve foreign investors to buy Lajos Simicska’s media portfolio. In fact, that includes not only Magyar Nemzet and mno.hu, but also Heti Válasz and Lánchíd Radio. According to zoom.hu, he intends to make the portfolio profitable. Therefore, Ungár was abroad last week and searched for potential investors.
Fidesz-close entrepreneurs aiming to buy Magyar Nemzet?
Based on information of zoom.hu,
Simicska is going to start negotiations this week
with interested investors. Firstly, he is going to talk with Ungár.
Ungár wrote in a Facebook-post that
his heritage means responsibility for him.
Thus, he would like to use it on behalf of his nation. He added that only after the end of their talks will he tell details about the issue.
In fact, Lajos Simicska kept only Hír TV of his media portfolio where financial rationalisation is also inevitable.
In fact, Pál Mihálkovics, a Hungarian businessman showed interest for the paper and wrote an e-mail in which he declared that he would like to buy Magyar Nemzet, Heti Válasz and Lánchíd Radio. However, Simicska thinks that he aims to give the portfolio into the hands of Fidesz-close entrepreneurs. Thus, they decided not to negotiate with Mr Mihálkovics who withdrew his offer last Friday. Since then
Ungár is the only potential investor in the issue.
Featured image: mno.hu
Source: zoom.hu
