In the past few years several articles were published about the FUTÁR project. Almost all of them were about the delayed introduction of the system, and the problematic performance of SYNERGON. Today it seems that the reorganization was good for the system, and the application works well.

According to you, is the FUTÁR project a failure or a success?

The project is successful from both the perspective of the BKK and the capital city. The system has been steadily and firmly operating for years now, and the passengers are satisfied. A system with this complexity cannot be found in other European cities. I don’t really understand the articles stating the opposite. The technical conversion and implementation of the system was carried out when I was the main shareholder and CEO of SYNERGON. Although the execution of the project was in huge delay compared to the originally assigned date, but it was because the plans that were made by the BKK could be only realized with many compromises and huge additional costs. We replaced all of our suppliers and the technology and we had to acquire more resources as the project was impossible to carry out with the original terms of the contract.

Who financed these changes?

We did, the shareholders of SYNERGON. In the selection of the new suppliers the BKK was very heavily involved. This caused as an additional two billion HUF cost. This was a loss that was solely borne by the company, and the BKK didn’t take even part of it. This cost had to be paid by me and the rest of the shareholders, and there is no really justification for us to pay as the additional cost was due to the non-proper customer specifications. With a cooperative customer SYNERGON could have been saved. The specifications of the project were as unrealistic as the fact that there were applicants for the tender. I don’t want to put the responsibility to them, but they didn’t make our job easier for sure. It could be felt at the time that the BKK didn’t favour Hungarian companies.

What do you mean by non-proper specifications?

According to the plans of the management of BKK at the time, our task was to integrate seven different applications on the vehicles. At first glance it seemed impossible and unnecessary. From a technical point of view there were some unrealistic specifications.

If these problems were so obvious, why SYNERGON applied for the FUTÁR project? If I am not mistaken, the former management of the company conducted the contract, not you.

There are cases when common sense is not enough. The contract that was conducted by the former management was a suicidal act. The 6.6 billion HUF price wasn’t enough for paying the costs of the project, and it can already be seen by now. The second best offer was 8 billion HUF. If you search for the facts you can realize that these differences are not by accident. One applicant included the additional costs coming from the wrong specifications, the other didn’t. You might ask the question why the management concluded a contract without knowing what they are undertaking. It is a good question; however, the responsibility is not solely theirs. Neither could we see this risk when we bought shares in SYNERGON. We also made a huge mistake, and paid for it.

Am I getting it right? Two billion Forint additional costs? Did you manage to get compensation?

As we can tell, no, we didn’t. SYNERGON almost went bankrupt and left the stock exchange. From a financial perspective the FUTÁR project was a failure. We couldn’t manage to make the decision makers to understand that without cooperation they are ruining a well-known Hungarian company, which was one of the few at the time in the sector. The truth is that the Group wasn’t in good shape when we acquired ownership in it. We didn’t hide the fact that we arrived there to act as crisis managers. In my opinion we were able to stabilize the company’s situation.

Is this why they say you got bogged down because of the FUTÁR project?

I’ve seen these kinds of interpretations of the situation but they hardly make sense for me. I was the biggest shareholder of SYNERGON. I could only bog down myself if I get into a quarrel with myself. There was no point in having a share in the company after all of this, so I sold the company. I executed my tasks. With the reorganization of the company I saved billions of HUF for the company as part of the cost reduction strategy. I quit SYNERGON for business reasons; there were no more tasks for me to carry out there. I am constructive, reorganizing person. I feel good where there is change and development. Unfortunately, the future of SYNERGON was determined by the FUTÁR project. It is sad to see that a badly conducted contract and a stubborn client can almost destroy a Hungarian medium-sized company. I couldn’t and didn’t want to assist to this anymore.

What about the Combinos?

We didn’t really have anything to do with what appeared in the press about the Combino trams. If a journalist would have made a little more research, it could have been seen that the backward regulatory environment and the slow work of the officials made the implementation of the system on these vehicles very slow. The BKV could only provide us vehicles in that pace in order not to disturb the schedule of the public transportation. It is no surprise that they didn’t think about that when they wrote the tender. There is nothing new under the sun, it is not worth for being on the news, and some representatives of the media didn’t bother to mention this.

Some news were about your reorganization plans. What happened to them?

I am certain that we executed well what we had undertaken. We managed to realize billions of HUF cost reduction. We were able to reorganize the cost structure of the company in a way that it could be maintained. We successfully agreed with the financing banks and clients. The investors sent positive feedback about the reorganization. The price of the shares was about 140 HUF when we appeared in the company, and after we executed the restructuring program the price exceeded 400 HUF and got into the BUX index within one year.