The guests at the Budapest Business Journal’s CEO Boardroom Meeting, hosted by the Matild Palace, A Luxury Collection Hotel Budapest, were told that this year’s Expat CEO Award will be contested by Byung Kim, lead country manager and lead controller at ExxonMobil Hungary Kft. (an American of Korean heritage), Ana Maria Vargas, country director at J&J Innovative Medicine Hungary (originally from Columbia), and Guntram Würzberg, chairman and CEO at E.ON Hungária (who continues a long tradition of having at least one German candidate in contention for the prize).

The Expat CEO Award isn’t the only title up for grabs on March 21. The CEO Community Award, introduced in its current form in 2023, honors those who support community building alongside their day job. This year’s shortlist comprises Zsófia Beck, managing director at Boston Consulting Group; Nikolett Blaskó, the founder, co-owner and CEO of the Advanced Communication Group; and Róbert Keszte, head of global operations at Continental.

The final decisions on the winners for both awards will be made by their separate expert juries (who were also responsible for whittling down the longlist of potential candidates to arrive at the candidates in contention) in the minutes before the CEO Gala starts at the Corinthia Hotel Budapest and are announced in the Grand Ball Room of the hotel as the highlight of the evening.

Who will win? You’ll find out if you are a guest at our invitation-only Black Tie event, but we’ll be sure to tell you in the following print issue of the Budapest Business Journal and even sooner than that online.

Meanwhile, back at the CEO Boardroom Meeting, our guests were also treated to a roundtable discussion, part of our ongoing series examining the critical factors driving the markets and the Hungarian economy in the months ahead.

The themes covered this time include the potential impact of “Trump Tariffs” on global, and, therefore, European and Hungarian trade, the GDP outlook for Hungary, any potential peace dividend from an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine, putative timetables for Hungary joining the euro, and the significance of ESG reporting becoming mandatory for large listed companies this year.

Look out for a podcast soon of what was a fascinating conversation. We are very grateful to our two panelists for sharing their expertise and knowledge with us: Rezső Rózsai, CEO of KPMG Hungary, and Barnabás Virág, deputy governor of the National Bank of Hungary.

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