The Hungarian Stock Exchange started its operations on 18 January 1864 in the headquarters of the Pesti Lloyd Society in Pest, on the banks of the Danube. The preparatory committee for the stock exchange was headed by Frigyes Kochmeister, who was also elected as the first president of the exchange (1864-1900). The institution was first established as a stock exchange for securities, but four years later it absorbed the centre of grain trading, the Grain Exchange, and took the name Budapest Commodity and Stock Exchange (BÁÉT), and under this name it operated as one of Europe's leading exchanges for 80 years. At the time of its launch in 1864, the exchange listed 17 shares, one bond, 11 foreign currencies and 9 bills of exchange. After a few sleepy years, the real boom came in 1872. In that year, 15 industrial and 550 financial joint stock companies had their statutes approved by the Minister of Commerce and were listed on the stock exchange.
The Budapest Stock Exchange moved in 1873, and until 1905 it moved to its new headquarters at the corner of Wurm (today: Szende Pál) and Mária Terézia (today: Apáczai Csere János) streets, and then to the Exhange Palace on Szabadság Square (1905-1948).
The first real stock market crash shook the Budapest stock exchange in May 1873. It took a decade and a half after the stock market crash before domestic investors were willing to buy shares again.
The early 1990s saw another spectacular long period, linked to the general investment boom of the millennium years and international stock market trends. The international importance of the Hungarian stock exchange is shown by the fact that from 1889 onwards, Budapest quotations were also published in Vienna, Frankfurt, London and Paris. From the 1990s onwards, Hungarian government bonds were regularly listed on the London, Paris, Amsterdam and Berlin stock exchanges. The main means of communication in these years was the new invention, the telephone.
By the turn of the century, 310 securities were traded on the stock exchange, and by the beginning of the First World War, almost 500 securities were traded, with annual turnover reaching one million shares in 1913, and the turnover of the Budapest Giro and Minting Company amounted to 2.7 billion crowns. At the same time, the turnover of grain was also growing dynamically: after 400,000 tonnes a year in 1875, by the turn of the century there were one million tonnes of grain traded on the exchange, and before the World War almost one and a half million tonnes. This made BSE Europe's leading grain exchange.
Source: G. Tamás Korányi - Nóra Szeles, Stock Exchange is Born (BSE, Budapest, 2005)
"What is needed is a serious, persistent will on the part of each of us, directed to visit, use and animate the young institution frequently, perhaps at first with some sacrifice of our habits, our desires and our interests."
Baron Frigyes Kochmeister (1816-1907)
President of the BSE (1864-1900)"As regards freedom of action, our institution desires nothing more than to do what is in the interest of the country as a whole, and to be free from any unilateral tendency, as it has been far from seeking to cultivate its own interests at the expense of the common good. "
Baron Zsigmond Kornfeld (1852-1909)
President of the BSE (1900-1909)"Our poor mother, this dismembered Hungary is sick, seriously sick, and let us put aside all other interests, real or apparent, and keep in mind the only point of view: what is necessary, what is good for our poor, sick mother: Hungary."