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Brief History of HUNÉP Universal Building Corp.

Predecessors in title of HUNÉP Universal Building Corp.:

• The Hajdú-Bihar County Council Building Company was founded in 1951.
• In 1989 its name changed to Hajdúság Universal Building Company (Hajdúsági Univerzális Építőipari Vállalat - HUNÉP), then it has been transformed to a corporation and
• from 1992 become known as Hajdúság Universal Building Corporation (Hajdúsági Univerzális Építőipari Részvénytársaság - HUNÉP RT).
• In 2001 HUNÉP Corp. fused with HUNKER Ltd. of the same ownership, which resulted the establishment of the recent HUNÉP Universal Building Corp. (shortened name: HUNÉP Universal CORP.) with raised joint capital.

Although the scope of the Council Building Company's activities was limited almost exclusively to building-reconstruction in the beginning, the company has also built new public institutions and flats all around the county since the 1960s.

The steadily growing organization has introduced new technologies, for instance building large-panelled and bench-shuttered ferroconcrete shells, slag pile foundation, which mainly served the efficiency of the industrialised construction of flats.

The company was the second biggest building organization of the county in the 1980s employing about 1200 people. Due to the countrywide recession of the sector, however, the number of contracts remarkably declined and caused functional disorders because of the unutilized capacities.

In 1991, the period of transforming to a corporation, significant organizational and personnel changes took place to prevent the company from further decline. Beside a strict cost management the corporation started to develop a structure conforming to the contemporary market conditions.

As a result of the 1992 privatisation process the company went into private ownership with a capital of 200 million Hungarian Forints. The owners, who were the employees of the corporation at the same time, occupy leading and important positions today as well.

During the next few years, the firm has began to grow dinamically and since the first year that ended with a negative trade balance it's economy has always been profitable. The return from sales after the structural construction projects has multiplied in the course of the years.

On the basis of our size and references, we can claim to be one of the biggest structural construction companies of Eastern-Hungary at present.

A remarkable scope of our activities expands to constructing public buildings for educational, medical and tourist purposes and residential buildings made up by many flats. Besides, our ancillary plants (carpentry, metal and concrete-technology) are suitable for doing jobs of significant volume.

Alongside with the gradual extension of our scope of activities we established the following subsidiaries

• HUNÉP INVEST Corp. dealing with real estate development and managing long term investments,
• VIOLA-36 Ltd. constructing residential buildings in Budapest,
• Halköz Ltd. dealing with business transactions,
• HUNÉP Campus Hotel Corp. maintaining the youth hostel in Kassai Street, Debrecen, which will open in September, 2005.

Additional information about the group of companies can be found on further pages.

In 2002 we have opened our office in Budapest, which significantly subtended our possibilities beyond the region.

Our primary aim is to keep and strengthen our position, so we lay more emphasis on first-class work than ever.

The proof of high quality work is the awards received from the Advisory Board of Construction Industry Masterprize for the construction of:

• Árpád Tóth Secondary Grammar School building in 1997,
• the psychiatric department and infectious ward of Gyula Kenézy Hospital managed by the Local Government of Hajdú-Bihar County in 1999,
• the Aquaticum of Debrecen in 2003 and
• the Department of Life Sciences - University of Debrecen in 2004.