As a fully qualified member of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountant (ACCA), a global professional accounting body, and as a Tax Advisor, from 2001 -2006 he worked in a Big Four auditors environment in Budapest (Arthur Andersen, Ernst & Young and KPMG), of which two and a half years were spent as assistant audit manager at KPMG. As the next step in his career, he was employed as Senior Internal Auditor by the American Standard group of companies in Brussels and subsequently held a series of posts at Johnson Controls (JCI) in its Bratislava Business Center, where over nearly seven years he rose through the ranks to the position of Global Compliance Director responsible for all JCI’s Shared Service Centers.

As a PhD candidate on Széchenyi István University’s Doctoral Programme in Management (SzEEDS^M), Mr Tóth is currently working towards the publication of his doctoral thesis. His current major interest lies in the area of Lease Accounting which, in layman’s terms, is the application of international financial reporting standards (IFRS) on companies’ leases of, for example property, vehicles etc. The key objective of the relevant changes is to minimise operational lease-related off-balance sheet items, thus increasing IFRS reporting of company liabilities. As the standard is effective from January of this year, and given that about 85% of all global lease contracts are estimated to be operational leases, these changes will have an significant impact on listed companies, also influencing the lease market.

Another area of research with which Árpád is concerned is the building-in of digitalization and the impact on Accounting.  As organizations implement the necessary systems and processes for the changes, he sees it as an opportune time to drive a digital transformation.

Apart from his research work, at present Árpád is teaching Controlling and IFRS on the BSc and MBA Executive Hungarian-taught programmes. His major concern is the continual need for the academic curriculum to take into consideration contemporary market practices so that students will always find the knowledge gained valuable.

Presently he also functions as Project Manager in the Research Centre of Vehicle Industry at SZE where he coordinates the financing needs for the Centre’s projects including Autonomous Vehicle Control, the development of an Energy Efficient Racing Car and the EFOP projects.

Looking to the future, Mr Tóth’s principle professional goal and ambition is to be employed as a researcher in the context of a fully internationalized (Széchenyi) University, which in a few years’ time, he hopes, should be in a position to get closer to an internationally recognized profile in Economics as well as a Research Centre specializing in finance and digitalization. Considering his plans to lecture on the international English-taught finance programmes at Széchenyi and to develop a wide network of international research partners, Árpád’s professional future in Győr can be seen as a natural further extension of his earlier international career.

Another of his hopes for the not-too-distant future is that the University will be in a position to  collaborate with ACCA to become an Approved Learning Partner. ACCA works with leading universities worldwide to provide routes for professional and academic qualifications. These qualifications are designed to complement the ACCA Qualification and help students to specialise in a particular field or to broaden their skills thereby enhancing employability.