Following news in April that the CEO of the Budapest Stock Exchange, Gyrgy Mohai, had resigned, the board of directors of the BSE appointed Zsolt Katona as the new CEO.
Most recently Katona was executive director of ING Bank Rt. / ING Bank NV Hungary Branch and has been an executive in various other divisions of ING since 1995. From 1991-95 he was head of securities sales and trading at MID Broker Ltd.
Katona has also been on the boards of the Association of Investment Service Providers; the Budapest Stock Exchange; the Foundation for Self-Reliance; KELER (Central Clearing House and Depository); and ING Pension Funds.
I made my first stock exchange deals in the good old days, at the beginning of the 90s, at the open-outcry trading floor in Vci Street, so my ties to the BSE do really go back a long way, Katona says. It gives me great pleasure that I can call my friends and acquaintances working at the stock exchange my colleagues now, and I am sure that we will work together successfully with this team of experienced and valuable professionals in the future as well.
Initially Katona will focus on replacing the trading system and the introduction of a new market making system, a decision passed at the general meeting of the BSE in April. He anticipates new investor groups will become available through BSE when the Xetra trading system is implemented, expected in 2013.
He says he also aims to establish a closer relationship between BSE and market participants, owners, issuers and economic policy decision-makers.
Zsolt Katona brings a lot of experience to the Budapest Stock Exchange, says Michael Buhl, chairman of the board of directors at the BSE. Apart from his strong capital markets track record, Zsolt is a well- respected individual in the industry, enjoying the support of the broad market. We were aiming at finding someone with Zsolts capabilities and experience, and I am very glad that he is on board now. We will continue the efforts to work closely together with all market participants and strengthen the position of the Budapest Stock Exchange as an internationally recognized capital market.
Katona says that while BSE is owned by the CEE Stock Exchange Group, which also includes the exchanges in Budapest, Ljubljana, Prague and Vienna, having strong national stock exchanges is important.
Although you can trade the stocks of serious, successful companies at the Hungarian Stock Exchange, I think it is definitely necessary that new success stories of Hungarian companies enter the Stock Exchange and that the variety of traded securities be extended, and thereby the national Stock Exchange can be strengthened further, he says.
(CG)