János Csák (born 15 October 1962) is a Hungarian corporate leader, honorary professor of management, who served as a Minister of Culture and Innovation between May 2022 till June 2024. Formerly, he served as Ambassador of Hungary to the United Kingdom between 2011 and 2014.[1]
He worked as treasurer of Matáv (now Magyar Telekom) playing an instrumental role in Matáv's $1 billion listing on the New York Stock Exchange, a deal seen as the model for future privatizations[10] winning the International Financing Review Award in 1997. Csák also crafted and negotiated the biggest mobile deal in the Central European region to its date: the acquisition of Westel (now T-Mobile) for $885 million from MediaOne in 1999.[11] Under his leadership in finance Matáv won the World's Best User of Syndicated Loans Award (Euromoney, 1997).[12]
During his tenure as chairman of the board at MOL in 1999–2000, he orchestrated a comprehensive growth strategy which resulted in the reconstruction of the leadership and the strategy of the group. Under his tenure, MOL acquired the Slovakian energy company Slovnaft.[13] As a result, MOL Group became a top-notch enterprise in the oil industry and a regional leader.[14][15][16]
He was an executive board member of Creditanstalt Investment Bank, a Vienna-based comprehensive investment bank focusing on Central-Eastern Europe in 2001–2003, where he supervised the energy and telecom practices.
Between 2003 and 2010, Csák ran his own management and strategic advisory practice. As an investor, he turned around a number of companies, notably he revitalized Helikon's (a publisher of quality literature and art),[17] and Heti Válasz's (a magazine reaching over 1% of the population nationwide, covering politics, economy and culture) brand strategy, and successfully sold both as efficient companies.[18][19]
Csák was a visiting fellow in political economy and energy security at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC and at Acton Institute, in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 2009–10.
He served as Hungary's Ambassador accredited to the United Kingdom between 2011 and 2014.[20][21]
Between 2016 and 2019 he was part-owner and Chairman of Design Terminal,[22] a non-profit incubator, part-owner and Chairman of Arete Ltd.,[23] an early-stage investment company, and part-owner of Brain Bar,[24] a major European festival on the future. Although he sold these companies in 2019,[25][26] he still remains active in the startup ecosystem.
Between 2017 and 2021 he was the Head of ConNext 2050 project at the Socialfuturing Center of the Corvinus University Budapest.[27][28][29]
From 2019 to 2021 he was on the supervisory board of Blue Planet Climate Protection Investments (Kék Bolygó Klímavédelmi Befektetési Zrt.).
Between 2015 and 2022 he served as a non-executive director of Bank of China (CEE) Ltd, from 2019 to 2022 he was a member of the Ethics Subcommittee of the Hungarian Olympic Committee.[30]
He is a member of the supervisory board of the Saint Francis Foundation of Déva. In 2003 he founded the Kálmán Széll Foundation, an association of business leaders.
He is married to Júlia Márton, they have four children and eight grandchildren. In his spare time, Csák enjoys literature. In addition to writing essays,[35] he also translated several books to Hungarian including novels and professional literature.[36][37][38][39][40][41] His recent works are ’The Genius of America (Az amerikai géniusz), and The Good Side of Life - Searching for Values in an Unstable World (Az élet jó oldala - Értékek keresése az ingatag világban), co-authored with Franciscan monk Csaba Böjte.[42][43] The American edition of János Csák's book, "The Genius of America" was published by Angelico Press in April 2024 in the United States.
