The Kadas Family Charitable Foundation

International financier and philanthropist Peter Kadas supports a wide range of innovative research and student opportunities at leading universities around the world, including the University of Toronto.

Born and raised in Hungary, Peter Kadas (BA 1986 TRIN) came to Canada in 1982 and graduated from the University of Toronto with a degree in economics and political science. Four years later, he obtained an MBA from Dartmouth College and embarked on a highly successful business career, most notably co-founding the first private Russian bank, Renaissance Capital, and the investment  group BXR Group. Kadas, who is based in Barcelona, Spain, now serves as a senior advisor at BXR Partners.

Through the Kadas Family Charitable Foundation, he and his wife Gyongyver Kadas have chosen important causes worldwide, particularly educational institutions and including Dartmouth College, Oxford University, the London School of Economics and Haifa University.

Furthermore, Kadas is founder and director of the Kadas Prize Foundation, which, working with partners at Cambridge University, CRASSH (the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities) and Cambridge University Press, funds the Nine Dots Prize, an innovative book prize for creative thinking that tackles contemporary societal issues.

Peter and Gyongyver Kadas have also been tremendously generous to U of T with donations to the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management and for the Lester B. Pearson International Scholarships, which enable many of the world’s top students to come to U of T. They established the Kadas Family Pearson Scholarship, which is awarded each year to a leading student from Europe through U of T’s Lester B. Pearson International Scholarship program.

Through their visionary benefactions at U of T and around the world, Peter and Gyongyver Kadas are playing an important role in advancing international scholarship and helping leading thinkers to tackle challenging global issues.