John Harsanyi Prize to the EIF

The European Investment Fund (EIF) was awarded the John Harsanyi prize at The Hungarian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (HVCA) event in recognition of its exceptional contribution to the development of entrepreneurial processes worldwide.

The conference is a forum for the most prominent players, investors, executives and business decision-makers of the Central and Eastern European venture capital and private equity sector to share and discuss market trends, to present the most topical issues with prominent players in the sector, and ”to create” CEElicon Valley. HVCA held its 24th annual investment conference, the largest and most prestigious professional event of the Hungarian VC/PE market, on 21 September 2023.

Cyril Gouiffes, Head of Social Impact Investing, received the prize on behalf of the EIF.

„So far, we have supported through our investments more than 15,000 Hungarian SMEs corresponding to a total amount of 332 million in equity, guarantees, and securitization with our  Hungarian financial intermediaries. Receiving the John Harsanyi Prize is an enormous honour and even more so a very special recognition of EIF’s contribution to the Hungarian and wider European economy” – said Gouiffes at the ceremony.

The EIB’s Gergely Krajcsi, Growth Finance & Venture Debt, has also participated in the HVCA Conference as a panelist pointing out how the EIB leveraged venture debt to further increase the breadth and depth of the venture financing market, and thus showing the complementarity and synergy between what the EIF and EIB do.

The first panel discussion focused on non-conventional venture debt, where financial experts shared insights on the current role of venture debt in early-stage firms’ life cycle, outlining a number of positive synergies and the nature of complementarity between venture debt and venture capital finance. What ingredients does CEE need to replicate the success of Silicon Valley? This was the main question of the region’s expert panel looking into late-comer advantages of CEE’s venture capital market and its capacity to catch up with the mature VC market of Silicon Valley.

By exploring the region’s current resources, regulatory environment, infrastructure and culture, as well as the targeted actions needed to be taken, the discussion highlighted that processes in the CEE venture capital market can be radically improved as the region climbs the steep development curve.

There was also an exciting panel discussion on how to explore the effects and benefits of featuring start-ups on TV, like SharkTank, Dragons’ Den, 2 Minuten 2 Million. The participants of the roundtable discussed the benefits of such shows for the investor community as an effective way of promoting entrepreneurship. 

The leaders of HVCA/HunBAN/StartUp Hungary highlighted the role and initiatives of individual organisations within the regional VC and PE community and addressed the achievements and planned steps of joining forces to make a more significant impact in the interest of improving the local legal framework and best transaction documentation practices of the startup ecosystem.

As in previous years, a social issue related to the private equity sector was also part of the full-day conference: Áron Szilágyi, a three-time Olympic champion saber fancer introduced MEEF, the Hungarian Elite Athletes' Interest Protection Forum, an association with a purpose to develop programs for Hungarian elite athletes in cooperation with business partners and educational institutions and provide them with financial and legal advice during their active years and after retirement.

John Charles Harsanyi was a Hungarian-American economist and the recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1994.