Equity funds should be imagined as a big pile of money lying around waiting to be invested. It is the fund manager who decides what that investment should be. The aim is to invest the money in companies that will later be successful and profitable. The fund manager will receive a management fee for the work done and usually a success fee at the end of each fund’s life.<\/p>\n
GB & Partners – or its predecessor under a different name – was bought in 2014 by \u00c1goston Gubicza and his then partner, Mih\u00e1ly Boris, from a formerly well-connected banker with government connections, Istv\u00e1n T\u00f6r\u00f6cskei. The company was then already managing billions of Hungarian forints of partly state-linked funds (through the so-called Jeremie programme, whose mismanagement we have previously reported on<\/a>).<\/p>\n The fund manager is currently owned by \u00c1goston Gubicza and Tam\u00e1s Pethe\u0151 through their companies. Pethe\u0151 is a well-known national figure in Hungarian sailing and a board member of the Balatonf\u00fcredi Yacht Club.<\/p>\n Porsche, Mercedes, BMW<\/strong><\/p>\n Several documents have come to our attention which reveal that GB & Partners planned to rent high-value, in several cases brand new and high-performance sports cars from its shareholder, Matchmaker Capital Kft., owned by Tam\u00e1s Pethe\u0151.<\/p>\n There are several documents about the rental of a 450 hp black Porsche 911 TARGA 4S. This car is truly in the luxury class: it is equipped with a wealth of comfort features, accelerates to 100 km\/h in 3.6 seconds and can reach speeds of up to 304 km\/h. According to the 2020 press release<\/a> which was published after the model was launched, the price of this sports car started at \u20ac158 616 (HUF 55.6 million).<\/p>\n The Porsche 911 Targa 4S in the manufacturer’s advertisement<\/p><\/div>\n There are also documents on the rental of a grey Mercedes-Benz GLS 580 4MATIC. The seven-seater, hybrid-powered urban luxury car with a huge size is currently priced at around 55-60 million HUF. This car is also four-wheel drive, like the Porsche.<\/p>\n We have two sets of documents on these transactions. On the one hand, there are the draft rental contracts, which set the rental price for both cars at \u20ac1247 (HUF 500,000) per month plus VAT. We also have a board of directors document stating that the company’s general meeting approved these rentals.<\/p>\n There were also papers about the rental of a Mercedes urban SUV<\/p><\/div>\n However, GB & Partners claimed, in response to repeated questions, that they had not rented either the Mercedes SUV or the Porsche. They stressed that the documents do not yet allow us to conclude that \u2018the business transaction in question did take place\u2019.<\/p>\n The Mercedes SUV was, however, seen by our colleague parked in the yard of the garden house of \u00c1goston Gubicza and his wife in Buda. We reported this to the company, indicating that we had a photograph of the car parked there, but they did not explain why the vehicle was there if it had not been rented. Instead, they said<\/p>\n \u2018the owners of GB & Partners Zrt. are not public figures, so any unauthorised intrusion into their private sphere, taking photographs at their residence and making them public […] will result in immediate legal action\u2019 on their part.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Among the draft contracts is one for the rental of a BMW 530e iPerformance, an upper mid-range business limousine for \u20ac499 (HUF 200,000) per month plus VAT. The rental of this car has also been approved by the company’s general meeting, according to a board document in our possession. The basic price of this type of car started at \u20ac52 673 (HUF 16,4 million) when it was launched. Among the draft contracts for the vehicles, dated 2020-2022, we also found documents for a BMW X5 (the base price of which starts at just under \u20ac83\u00a0743 (HUF 32 million), a BMW 530i XDrive and two \u0160koda Superb 3Ts.<\/p>\n Our colleague saw one of the \u0160koda Superbs parked in the underground car park of the fund manager’s office building.<\/p>\n When contacted, GB & Partners said that it had not rented a car from Matchmaker Capital Ltd. for several years. The latter company, when contacted, said that it was a car rental company and had been renting new and used cars to the fund manager for years.<\/p>\n In other car transactions, there are also indications that GB & Partners was doing business with its owner. Among the internal documents obtained by Direkt36 is one according to which the fund manager planned to buy a Mercedes 221 S500 leased from Agustin Consulting Trading and Services Ltd. Agustin Consulting is owned by \u00c1goston Gubicza, so GB & Partners planned to buy the car from its owner.<\/p>\n When asked, GB & Partners admitted that the 11-year-old vehicle is owned and used by the fund manager.<\/p>\n Cheap loans<\/strong><\/p>\n It was not only when renting or buying cars that the fund manager made deals with its owners.<\/p>\n In several cases, the company has granted interest-free or very favorable (2 percent) loans to its owners for millions of forints. Some of these loans were then regularly extended in maturity, even by years from the original date.<\/p>\n Although intra-group loan transactions are quite common in the business world, according to a financial expert interviewed by Direkt36, who asked for anonymity, interest-free loans are very rare even in this environment. As for interest-bearing loans granted by the fund manager, the expert said that loans granted between 2017 and 2021 are still at an acceptable level, as they are usually adjusted to the interest rate of the central bank and even increased above it. However, according to the documents in our possession, some of the loans granted to owners had interest rates well below the base rate at the time of disbursement.<\/p>\n The most common beneficiaries of the loans are the two shareholders of the fund manager, GB Capital Partners, owned by \u00c1goston Gubicza, and Matchmaker Capital, owned by Tam\u00e1s Pethe\u0151.<\/p>\n According to the fund manager’s publicly available financial statements, in 2018 GB Capital received an interest-free loan of \u20ac31\u00a0360 (HUF 10 million) maturing in 2021, which was later amended to 2023. In 2020, the same company received an interest-bearing loan of \u20ac640\u00a0715 (HUF 225 million).<\/p>\n The fund manager’s latest publicly available report for 2023 still includes an interest-free loan of \u20ac31\u00a0360 (HUF 10 million), this time with a repayment deadline of end-May 2026. In addition, in current exchange rate \u20ac931\u00a0908 (HUF 375 million) is shown as an interest-bearing loan, also maturing in May 2026. (The public accounts do not show the interest rate, so it is not known what percentage it is.)<\/p>\n According to the board and other internal documents obtained by Direkt36, Matchmaker also received three loans from the fund manager in 2023 with an interest rate of 2 percent, totaling \u20ac96 871 (HUF 37 million). During the period the loan was disbursed, the base rate of the central bank was between 12.25 and 13 percent. The loans to Matchmaker have also been subject to several repayment deferrals. For example, there is an interest-free loan of HUF 4 million, the maturity of which has been postponed by five years compared to the original agreement.<\/p>\n All three companies concerned – the fund manager and the two companies receiving the loans – have stated that the movement of funds between a company and its owners in the form of loans, or the modification or extension of such contracts for any reason, is permitted by law and that the interest rate is freely determined by the parties in compliance with the law. The companies added that all economic transactions between GB & Partners and its owners were carried out accordingly.<\/p>\n The Hungarian National Bank had objections<\/strong><\/p>\n An audit of GB & Partners carried out by the Hungarian National Bank (MNB) in 2018, also found problems related to, among other things, ownership concentration. The central bank complained that GB & Partners had contracted various services, such as \u2018intermediation\u2019 and \u2018decision support\u2019, with companies that were owned by the fund manager’s owners or their relatives.<\/p>\n According to the 2018 investigation, such work was contracted with Privacent Kft., owned by Tam\u00e1s Pethe\u0151, and Augustin Consulting, one of whose owners was \u00c1goston Gubicza, as well as with a company whose majority owner was a close relative of Mih\u00e1ly Boris, who still indirectly owned a stake in GB & Partners for part of the period under investigation.<\/p>\n The MNB found that this \u2018created a conflict of interest\u2019 because the owners and managers of the fund manager were both in a role in which they decided on the funds’ investments, while their companies were also involved as service providers in the process.<\/p>\n The Hungarian National Bank has issued a decision warning GB & Partners, inter alia, to ensure full compliance with the legal requirements on conflict-of-interest situations. The MNB also criticized the fact that the fund manager did not always comply with its reporting obligations, or did so after the deadline, and that its general ledger statements and its balance of accounts were not always fully consistent with each other.<\/p>\n The investigation also revealed that the same person was responsible for the accounting and internal audit during the period under review and could not therefore control his own work. According to the MNB, the fund manager had not yet selected an external expert to carry out the audit at the time of the investigation, leaving the accounting activity without internal control.<\/p>\n The decision also shows that the fund manager disputed the MNB’s comments on several points, but generally took note of them and informed the central bank of various plans for solutions and immediate measures. Regarding the management of conflict-of-interest situations, it noted that it had started a review of its internal processes with the help of an external consultant and indicated that it was willing to refine them, if necessary, \u2018to avoid such similar situations in the future\u2019.<\/p>\n The MNB took note of the information provided by the fund manager on its future actions but maintained its own findings and ordered the fund manager to pay a supervisory fine of \u20ac10 666 ( HUF 3.4 million).<\/p>\n GB & Partners told Direkt36 that this was the first MNB investigation since the company was founded and that the fine imposed was extremely low. They stressed that the warnings contained in the MNB’s decision regarding conflict-of-interest situations and internal audit activities are only warnings, and that the fine was in fact imposed for late compliance with reporting obligations.<\/p>\n The above is contradicted by the fact that in the explanatory memorandum of the document published publicly<\/a> on the fund manager’s website, the MNB also mentions the infringements found in relation to conflicts of interest and internal control activities, in addition to the late fulfilment of the reporting obligations, as grounds for the fine.<\/p>\n \u2018As a fund manager, GB & Partners Zrt. carries out its activities with the highest possible degree of prudence and in maximum compliance with the relevant rules and MNB regulations\u2019, GB & Partners wrote to us in its response.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n We also contacted Mih\u00e1ly Boris with our questions about the investigation, but his reply also stipulated that we could not quote him. We have not been able to contact the company of his close relative. According to publicly available records, the company was wound up in liquidation in 2022.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Tam\u00e1s Pethe\u0151, the co-owner of the fund manager, said that Privacent, which he previously owned, had had no revenues for years and was closed in 2021. \u2018In addition, we are not at liberty to comment on the alleged findings of an investigation conducted by the Hungarian National Bank at our business partner 7 years ago,\u2019 he added.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Successes and missteps<\/strong><\/p>\n Although GB & Partners advertises on its website that \u2018all projects have to go through a very thorough and detailed selection process\u2019, according to the documents in our possession, it seems that they have managed to get it wrong several times in recent years.<\/p>\n According to its website, the fund manager has invested in more than 55 companies, so-called portfolio companies.<\/p>\n Perhaps the best known of GB & Partners’ portfolio companies is Nanushka. The fund manager regularly communicates about the success of the fashion brand, but the company has been loss-making in three of its five financial years since 2023. In 2023, for example, it had net sales of \u20ac18\u00a0065 191 (HUF 6.9 billion ) and an after-tax profit of minus \u20ac8\u00a0639 874 (HUF 3.3 billion). In its most recent financial report, Nanushka explained the decline by the war in Ukraine and changing consumer habits due to the Covid epidemic.<\/p>\n In response to our inquiry, P\u00e9ter Baldaszti, co-owner and CEO of Nanushka, wrote, among other things, that the financial indicators from the Nanushka International Zrt. report are not complete because the Nanushka Group has several foreign subsidiaries on three continents, and these subsidiaries are not currently consolidated in the published report.<\/p>\n Baldaszti added that the company should be profitable again by the second half of 2025 and that international demand for the brand has not declined but has increased spectacularly.<\/p>\n There are other well-known and successful companies in GB & Partners’ portfolio. Although recent – 2022 – Exclusive Change, a currency exchange group, seems to be a successful investment. According to the company’s most recent data, it ended the year with net sales of \u20ac13\u00a0614 374 (HUF 5.2 billion) in 2023, with a 2023 after-tax profit of over \u20ac2\u00a0618\u00a0143 (HUF 1 billion).<\/p>\n However, the fund manager has several failed investments.<\/p>\n In the company’s own risk management reports for 2020 and 2021, obtained by Direkt36, it was repeatedly reported that a number of companies in their portfolio have been in a difficult liquidity situation in recent years. In several cases, companies have been liquidated or wound up. These failures were explained in the reports by the failure to achieve the objectives set, and the company’s operations became redundant. The sums invested in these companies were therefore not recovered.<\/p>\n One of the failed investments was Minibrake Ltd, which was engaged in the production of remote-controlled emergency brakes for children’s bicycles and received a $40 million investment in 2013. In 2019, it was liquidated because its only contract partner suspended the performance of the contract, thus rendering its operations redundant. Minibrake Ltd. could not be reached.<\/p>\n In relation to its investments, GB & Partners highlighted that it has no obligations about their operational management. They stressed that in their 10 years of operation, they had invested in around 60 companies, with an estimated value of (in current exchange rate) \u20ac186\u00a0289\u00a0120 (HUF 75 billion). The investments are operating companies which currently employ more than 1 100 people, according to the company.<\/p>\n According to the fund manager, it is a misconception that a large number of the investments of the funds it manages are in liquidation, although this does happen due to industry specificities, typically for early-stage (e.g. start-up) investments. The fund manager also pointed out that venture capital investments are complex, medium to long-term investments, and that it does not believe that the accounting performance of venture capital investments in selected years reflects the current and future value of the investment.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.direkt36.hu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/gb1-800x442.webp\")
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