Local expat businessman Wolfgang Bartesch relates his experience on the ground through the global economic crisis over the last couple of years.

Magyarországi Volksbank regards itself as a bank for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) first and foremost. It is no surprise therefore that the bank is up in front when it comes to topics such as the recently agreed package for beleaguered foreign-currency borrowers and the Széchenyi Card. The Budapest Times spoke to chairman-CEO László Balázs about how the bank’s business clients are faring and his assessment of the government’s economic policy.

“We simply want to highlight, with con-structive intent, those points in the [National Reform] Programme (Széll Kálmán plan) that we find problematic or too vague,” László Ábrahám, general manager of National Instruments Hungary, of Debrecen, says with reference to the nature of criticisms made by many representatives of the business sector. He spoke on the topic at an event organised by the Joint Venture Association. The Budapest Times spoke to him about the basis for the remarks he made there.

PSP Siklóssy & Partner Vezet?i Tanácsadói Kft., the Budapest subsidiary of the Bonn-based firm Porges, Siklossy & Partner GmbH, is coming up to the celebration of its 20th anniversary. Personnel consultant and partner Ern? Dús has been part of the company almost right from the start. We spoke to him about the market.

Impressive growth rates and good business prospects. Thomas Schauer, CEO of freight transport company Gebrüder Weiss, has no reason to complain at the moment. He told The Budapest Times what gives him reason to hope this will remain the case.

The new terminal building of Budapest’s Ferihegy airport, named the SkyCourt, was handed over to its operator, Budapest Airport, in the middle of February and will open officially in just under two weeks. It was built by Hungarian construction company KÉSZ, which is also working on another high-profile project: the Mercedes factory in Kecskemét. We spoke to KÉSZ director general László Szalados about both projects and the company’s future key customers.

Jo Gowie, director of hotel development, Mellow Mood Group  While many in the market are complaining about oversupply in the upper end of the Budapest hotel market, Mellow Mood keeps trucking along, opening two new hotels last year and another two or  three planned for this year.

Hinnerk de Boer has been at the helm of Hungaropress, which predominantly sells foreign press products, for almost 10 years. By diversifying the business at the right time he has managed to keep the company in the black despite the financial crisis.

Magyar Telekom had barely begun to recover from the effects of the financial crisis when it was hit last autumn with a special tax on telecommunications companies, depriving the company of almost half of its expected profit in 2010 alone. CFO Thilo Kusch still remains optimistic but emphasises that the company’s success and Hungary’s success go hand in hand.

On 1 January Austrian Heinz Wiedner will take over as CEO at Raiffeisen Bank after Péter Felcsuti’s roughly two decades at the helm. We spoke to Wiedner about his plans for the bank and the prospects of the Hungarian banking sector.