Tim Heald

In Budapest

In Budapest it is still who you know, not what you know, that counts.

issue 15 December 2007

Budapest is the only city I know where Gresham’s Law takes pride of place. On the Pest side of the Danube opposite the Iron Bridge, in a niche on the front of what is now the Four Seasons Hotel, stands a statue of the propounder of ‘Bad Money Drives Out Good’. His presence is a reminder that this old Eastern European city was a hub of capitalism before it became the drab communist capital that it was throughout most of my life. The hotel used to be the European headquarters of the London-based Gresham Life Assurance Company.

Apart from Gresham, my sense of Budapest as a place to do business derives largely from Brian Maclean, author of a guide to Hungarian customs and etiquette (published by Culture Smart) and a convivial companion on the rickety train out to the palace at Gödöllö, where the Emperor Franz Josef’s tragic wife Sissy spent much of her life.

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