Gábor Kovács

Gábor Kovács is a banker and philanthropist from Hungary. After high school he received a scholarship to the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) from where he graduated in 1980. Mr Kovács started a professional career at the foreign currency division of the Hungarian National Bank. In 1985 he transferred to Citibank as managing director, later he moved to Citibank London where he was responsible for the bank’s Eastern European investments. In 1991 Mr Kovács returned to Hungary to form an investment company, Bankár Holding, specialized in corporate mergers and acquisitions and investment banking. Expanding his interests beyond the financial sector, Mr Kovács opened the first private hospital in Hungary in 1998. Mr Kovács has been purchasing works of art for fifteen years. Covering the period from the early 18th century to the present, the collection is comprised of nearly 400 pieces. In 2002 he established the Kovács Gábor Art Foundation (KOGART) with a donation of 3 billion HUF (approximately 10 million GBP) with the aim of supporting contemporary artists in Hungary. The Foundation’s gallery is located in a historic villa on Andrássy Avenue in Budapest, bought and renovated by him. Mr Kovács also purchased a monastery in Sopron, Hungary. The project received significant support from the Norwegian Fund and the building was renovated in 2010 to become the home of an international retreat, education and meditation centre of an international organization, World Servers Foundation (WSF) that was enabled by Mr Kovács in Geneva in November 2010. Mr Kovács is very honoured to be a member of the Trilateral Commission since 2006.