“US company BlackRock, the world’s largest fund manager, will be establishing an innovation centre in Budapest, thanks to which it will also be creating 500 high-added-value new jobs”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó announced at a press conference in Budapest.

Mr. Szijjártó added that the Government will be providing 280 million forints (EUR 900,000) in training funding towards the recruitment of new staff. “The fund management company manages over 5 trillion dollars, which is 42-43 times Hungary’s GDP; only the United States and China have larger economies”’, he pointed out.

“BlackRock is bringing its financial and business processes, technologies and products, as well as the development of new management methods and its creative marketing function to Budapest”, he told the press.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade called the investment the greatest success of the new economic policy transition, explaining that global competition for export opportunities and investments is continuously increasing and the economy is stepping up to a previously unimaginable level of technological development, and the question of who will be successful in this new era will be decided according to new criteria.

Mr. Szijjártó also said that as a result of the political transition in the United States, multilateralism will be replaced by another kind of international political thinking, and a patriotic economic policy of previously unheard of strength is in development, noting that he used the term patriotic not as a qualifier, but as a statement of fact. “Hungarian economic policy is being remodelled to be successful in this new environment”, he added.

Senior Managing Director of BlackRock Patrick Olson told reporters that the company decided on Budapest because of the education system, the level of infrastructure, the secure environment and the quality of life, in addition to the Government’s undertakings. “The New York-based company, which was founded in 1988, employs some 13 thousand people in 30 countries, with around 4 thousand staff in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region and 25 investment centres worldwide”, he told the press.

Managing Director of BlackRock Budapest Melanie Seymour explained that recruitment would begin during the first quarter of the year and the company will also be searching for staff from Hungary’s largest universities, in addition to which it would also like to entice Hungarians working in the UK to return home. The centre will be providing technological and financial analysis services, with other products to be added in future, she explained.

(MTI/Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade)