“When we were trying to find a bank for Copy General, most banks immediately refused us because they didn’t want to deal with companies with only one million forints as base capital, which they...

“When we were trying to find a bank for Copy General, most banks immediately refused us because they didn’t want to deal with companies with only one million forints as base capital, which they thought was not enough. Finally we found a surprisingly flexible bank called Budapest Bank. The shock came when the lady said that she would be really willing to help and the one-million forint base capital was not a problem, but the bank was full. We just stood there with Paul and stared. Then finally Paul asked me to translate the following sentence: ‘If your bank is really full, we’ve just recently rented a large basement in Lonyai utca, so if you can’t store any more money in your bank, we would be willing to help.’ It turned out that it was not a matter of where to put the money; the bank had no more space for files (they were installing a computer system and were recording everything twice, on the computer and then on paper). It was interesting to see how the banking system changed in two or three years after this scenario. By the way, in the end we did become a customer of Budapest Bank.”