Romania risks sliding into a severe recession as political deadlock in Bucharest threatens to derail critical economic reforms, harm investor confidence and trigger a sovereign credit downgrade unless a stable government is installed quickly, local consultancy firm Frames said in an analysis.
"The leu/euro exchange rate is breaking record after record, moving rapidly toward 5.3-5.5 lei per euro, putting pressure on prices and on Romanians’ pockets. At the same time, the interest rates at which the state borrows have risen sharply to the highest level in the European Union,” Frames said in its analysis. "The corrections dictated by the markets are ruthless and, unfortunately, will be extremely costly for all Romanians," according to Frames manager and economic analyst Adrian Negrescu.


The Romanian leu continued weakening on Wednesday, reaching yet another all-time low against the euro, with Romania's central bank setting its reference exchange rate at 5.2688 lei per euro, 0.97% higher than 5.218 lei per euro on Tuesday.


Frames' warning comes a day after the government led by liberal prime minister Ilie Bolojan lost a no-confidence vote initiated by far-right opposition party Alliance for Uniting Romanians (AUR) and centre-left Social Democrat Party (PSD), which left the cabinet last month.


According to the consultancy, for Romania, 2026 could be a defining year, with three major strategic objectives now depending on political stability: completing the EU-funded recovery programme NRRP and securing 10 billion euro in EU funds, accessing 16.68 billion euro through the EU’s SAFE defence investment programme and advancing the country’s accession to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).


"If we do not quickly have a government capable of implementing these reforms, unfortunately we will head towards a severe recession, because the markets will not hesitate to sanction Romania for this political drift," Adrian Negrescu said.

CloudXEdge has launched in early May, entering the Romanian market with an integrated portfolio of public, private and hybrid cloud solutions and services designed to improve performance and drive modernization across businesses and public institutions.

Part of Liberty Global, CloudXEdge introduces a new concept to the market, created by a team of Romanian experts recognized in the IT industry, led by Mihnea Rădulescu, CEO CloudXEdge and VP Digital Infrastructure for Liberty Global CEE.
The CloudXEdge infrastructure, based on two data centers located in Romania and backed by investments in state-of-the-art technology, has been natively interconnected with the global telecom network.
CloudXEdge – Distributed Cloud Infrastructure & Proprietary Platform
CloudXEdge is a distributed cloud infrastructure ecosystem integrated with a proprietary platform to offer customers the flexibility of the public cloud services, the security of the private cloud and the resilience of the hybrid cloud with the ultra-low latency of the edge technology.
The AI-ready ecosystem unifies enterprise grade technology, strong edge computing capabilities, robust infrastructure based on local data centers and the proprietary platform developed with the latest technologies – cloudXedge.com.

As business service centres expand, companies are helping shape courses and skills to meet growing demand for graduates.As Slovakia continues to strengthen its position as a hub for shared and business service centres, cooperation between universities and the sector is becoming a key pillar in preparing the next generation of talent. 

AmCham Slovakia’s Business Service Centers Forum (BSCF), representing major employers in shared services, finance, IT and operations, has been working closely with Slovak universities for years, with supporting education forming part of its mission from the very beginning. 

“BSCF practically from its foundation started actively cooperating with universities, as this is one of our core goals,” Peter Rusiňák, coordinator of BSCF at AmCham Slovakia, explains for The Slovak Spectator. 

Even before the formal platform existed, member companies were already contributing to higher education through specialised lectures and full-semester courses in areas such as financial controlling, actuarial science, accounting standards and strategic management. 

Given the nature of jobs in the sector, collaboration is strongest with technical, economics and management-oriented faculties. 

Full Story  (March 2026)

More than 200 roles at risk as US telecoms group shifts work to lower-cost locations and invests in AI.The American telecommunications group AT&T is preparing a significant round of redundancies at one of its operations centres in Slovakia.

Staff at the company’s Košice branch in eastern Slovakia were reportedly called to a meeting on Monday, 13 April, after which their work schedules were abruptly cleared. One employee, who asked to remain anonymous, told Denník N that between 200 and 230 workers had their shifts altered to attend the briefing, after which they were marked “offline”.

According to Korzár, citing the local labour office, up to 340 jobs are at risk.
The company did not provide a comment on the situation.

AT&T operates in Slovakia from centres in Košice and Bratislava, employing around 2,000 people. In 2019, the company employed more than 3,300 people in Slovakia.
The company entered the Slovak market in 2006, providing global customer support and IT infrastructure services.

Warnings and terms of redundanciesRumours of job losses had circulated internally for weeks. Employees point to earlier changes this year — including the cancellation of Sunday shifts and requests to update personal contact details — as signals that redundancies were imminent.

The union organisation uniJa, which represents workers at multinational firms including AT&T, confirmed the development. It said it had been informed — albeit with limited detail — of an organisational restructuring affecting Košice from 1 July.

Documents seen by the media indicate employees will be made redundant on the grounds of organisational change. Contracts are expected to end on 30 June, with staff receiving salary compensation through the notice period and severance equivalent to three months’ average pay. Employees are not expected to work beyond mid-April.
Those most affected are understood to be frontline customer service staff handling inbound calls, as well as their managers. A smaller number of roles may remain in business support units, though employees say these could also be at risk over time.

Workers attribute the cuts to a combination of rising costs and structural changes. Lower-cost service centres in countries such as Egypt and India have expanded, while automation and artificial intelligence tools are increasingly handling routine customer queries.
In 2024, AT&T in Slovakia reported a modest year-on-year increase in profit to €6.2 million, while revenues rose to €169 million.
According to workers in Košice, jobs in Bratislava might also be at risk in the near future.

The cuts come against the backdrop of mounting pressure across Slovakia’s shared services sector, which has expanded rapidly over the past decade but has faced growing challenges since the coronavirus pandemic.
AT&T also reduced its workforce in Slovakia in January 2021, when around 10 percent of its then 2,800 jobs were cut. Further cuts followed in subsequent years.
SkryťTurn off adsLast year, Deutsche Telekom IT Solutions Slovakia also carried out layoffs in Košice, with 150 employees laid off over the summer.


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Wärtsilä, a global leader in marine and energy technologies, is further strengthening its presence in Poland by establishing a new Wärtsilä Global Business Services (WGBS) hub in Gdańsk. The new centre will support Wärtsilä’s global operations and create approximately 100 new expert-level roles by the end of 2026, offering attractive career opportunities for finance and data professionals in the region.
Wärtsilä has been operating in Gdańsk for 30 years and currently employs around 300 people locally within its marine business. The establishment of the business services hub marks a natural next phase in the company’s development in Poland.
– Establishing a new hub in Gdańsk is an important step in enhancing efficiency and capabilities of our Global Business Services. With a strong pool of skilled finance professionals in the area, we aim to grow our team in Gdańsk to reach around 100 employees supporting our businesses globally by the end of 2026, says Antti Valtokari, Vice President, Wärtsilä GBS & Operating Model.

Technology and Talent – The Pillars of the Gdańsk Hub
The Gdańsk business services hub will focus on finance operations and master data management, supporting Wärtsilä’s businesses worldwide. The team will work with modern, enterprise-scale platforms such as SAP S/4HANA, Basware AP and ServiceNow, playing a key role in developing efficient, future-ready processes.
– Our team will be responsible not only for day-to-day process execution, but also for continuous improvement and technology-enabled process transformation. We are looking for experienced finance operations professionals who combine strong digital fluency with a passion for driving process improvement – a core part of our operating model. Additionally, we will enhance our team with automation and AI experts, says Wojciech Krygowski, Head of Wärtsilä Global Business Services Hub in Gdańsk.
The first positions have already been opened for application, click here: https://www.randstad.pl/wartsila/

Pomerania Welcomes a Global Player
Wärtsilä employs approximately 17,900 professionals across 199 locations in 78 countries and is listed on Nasdaq Helsinki. In 2025, the company reported net sales of EUR 6.9 billion. The Gdańsk hub will be Wärtsilä’s second Global Business Services centre, complementing the existing hub in Vaasa, Finland.
Local and regional authorities have welcomed the investment as a strong vote of confidence in Pomerania’s talent market and strategic focus areas.

– We are truly delighted that a company like Wärtsilä has chosen to locate its global business services centre here in Pomerania. The maritime economy and energy transition are the two pillars on which we are building the future of our region. There is no better address for a global leader in marine and energy technologies than Gdańsk – says Mieczysław Struk, Marshal of the Pomeranian Voivodeship.

The investment was supported by Invest in Pomerania, a regional initiative coordinated by the Pomerania Development Agency, assisting foreign investors in establishing and growing their operations locally
to edit.

(From March 2026)

Equans, a Bouygues Group company with 83,000 employees operating in 20 countries, announced the opening of a new IT hub in Romania aimed at supporting the group’s global operations. The company also appointed Irina Ciucioi-Badea as director of the new facility.

The hub will serve as a capability center providing IT services to Equans businesses in multiple countries, including areas such as identity management, enterprise resource planning (ERP), artificial intelligence, and data protection.
“We are delighted to establish our new IT Hub in Romania. This initiative reinforces Equans’ dedication to the performance of our IT ecosystem, enabling us to better control our IT operations in an increasingly complex digital landscape. Romania’s place in the European Union, combined with its vibrant tech ecosystem and deep talent pool, makes it an ideal location for this next phase of transformation,” said Emmanuel Gachet, Group CIO Equans.
For its new IT Hub in Romania, Equans has appointed Irina Ciucioi-Badea as director. She brings over 20 years of international leadership experience across Europe and Asia, with a strong background in Shared Services, Finance, Procurement, and large-scale Digital Transformation. Throughout her career, she has led large organisations of more than 500 people across the EMEA region, the company said.

“The IT hub in Romania will enable us to leverage strong local expertise across multiple IT domains while serving global needs,” stated Irina Ciucioi-Badea, IT Hub Director, Equans Romania.
She will oversee the setup and development of the hub and coordinate cross-functional teams delivering IT services across the group.
The Equans IT Hub Romania is expected to begin operations in March 2026, with recruitment and onboarding underway.
A subsidiary of the Bouygues group, Equans is a global leader in the energy and services sector, operating in 20 countries, with 83,000 employees across five continents, and EUR 18.7 billion in revenue in 2025. It is a market leader across European markets such as France, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the UK, and also has a strong presence in the United States and Latin America.
Source: Romania Insider

• Vodafone’s shared services division, VOIS, has transitioned from an internal cost-centre into an outward-looking commercial entity targeting external enterprise and telco customers.
• CEO Gary Adey and CCO Chris Meads reflect on evolving the sector’s largest shared services organisation, with VOIS becoming an ‘active part of Vodafone Group strategy’.
• Equity partner Accenture has been pivotal in bridging commercial capability.
• The unit’s structural reorganisation allows VOIS to take on commercial risk, manage its own profit and loss, and offer flexible ‘as-a-Service’ propositions.
• MWC26 was used to talk up contract wins as evidence of the service provider moving from ‘order-takers to problem-solvers’.
• Pioneering Egyptian delivery centre, alongside hubs in India and Europe, provides high quality/value talent supporting operational prowess and driving VOIS into new MENA markets.
• Strategic partnerships with major technology players, including SAP, Microsoft, Google Cloud, and AWS, are fundamental to VOIS’s open ecosystem strategy.
• VOIS leadership is actively calling for an industry-wide shift away from siloed operations towards a highly collaborative, shared services model that drives efficient growth.
  

“We stopped playing defence in 2023”, says Gary Adey, Chief Executive of VOIS.In the years since, Vodafone’s shared operations organisation has been reinventing itself as a groundbreaking, outward-looking commercial venture intended to change the direction of telco operations delivery not just for its parent company, but for the entire industry.
Speaking to TelcoTitans in 2025, one particular change was at the forefront of Adey’s mind. “I’ve got customers again”, he said with delight, “I’ve got telco customers, I’ve got B2B customers and we’re transforming a business”. At the time, VOIS (an acronym for Vodafone Intelligent Solutions) was at the start of this reinvention: the brand was launched; Accenture had made a €150m (£130m) investment to take a minority stake and enter into a strategic collaborative agreement; and the organisation was being built.
A year later, showcased at Mobile World Congress 2026, VOIS has a growing list of commercial wins — internal to Vodafone Group and external — that management considers proof of a successful shared services strategy.

Full Story at Telco Titans

Announced in late March 2026, German premium car maker BMW is expanding its presence in Hungary with a new business service center.

The EUR 4.3 million investment, supported by the HIPA Hungarian Investment Promotion Agency, creates a new unit in Debrecen, the location of BMW’s Hungarian plant, producing the iX3 model of the Neue Klasse series since October 2025.
The Debrecen BMW Service Hub will support the Bavarian car maker’s production network in the fields of logistics and finance. The project is expected to create 50 new high value-added jobs.

Debrecen secured the investment in strong international competition, outperforming locations including BMW’s Munich headquarters, Salzburg, as well as sites in Romania and India.

The new service center will provide logistics support for BMW’s European plants, focusing on quality assurance, container management and material inspection. In the financial domain, experts in Debrecen will contribute to the development of accounting and customs processes.

The project further strengthens Debrecen’s position within BMW’s global network of more than 30 production sites, while also deepening cooperation between BMW and the University of Debrecen. As part of this partnership, new training programs with a focus on customs will be launched.

Iceland’s flag carrier Icelandair is establishing a technical services centre in Vilnius. Opening in May 2026, the new division will employ 15 specialists in its first year across roles including CAMO engineers, planning engineers, technical records specialists, and maintenance coordinators. 
As Icelandair’s first dedicated technical aviation operation in the region, the Lithuanian team will take responsibility for the airline’s third-party technical services. The expansion builds on the carrier’s existing presence in the Baltics through Icelandair Business Services, its long-standing subsidiary in Tallinn, which has provided accounting, ticketing, and back-office services for Icelandair since 2002. 

Lithuania has a strong aviation culture and a depth of technical knowledge that is hard to find elsewhere in the region. We see excellent potential here to support Icelandair and its customers worldwide, and to grow our third-party services further without disrupting our core airline operations.
Edvinas Geležinis, Manager at Icelandair Third Party Technical Services

OAG, the essential intelligence partner transforming global travel, is expanding its technology and data teams in Lithuania, with plans to hire up to 25 new employees in 2026. The company will be recruiting data engineers, software engineers, as well as infrastructure and operations specialists across its offices in Vilnius and Kaunas. 
Lithuania has been central to OAG’s global operations for nearly a decade. The company first established a development centre in Kaunas in 2018, and significantly grew its Lithuanian footprint in 2023 with the acquisition of airfare data provider Infare, which had been operating from Vilnius for over ten years. Today, OAG’s Lithuanian teams are responsible for the bulk of the company’s global technology and data operations, playing a key role in developing and maintaining the platforms and data products that power aviation insights worldwide. 

“Lithuania continues to play a central role in OAG’s global operations, particularly in technology and data. The strong local talent pool in data engineering, software development, and analytics, combined with excellent technical universities and a vibrant technology ecosystem, make Lithuania an outstanding environment for building high-performing teams. It is why the country remains a key location for our future growth.”
Jo Mills, VP of People & Culture at OAG

The company will be looking for data engineers with experience in designing and implementing data pipelines and building reliable data models, as well as software engineers with backend systems expertise. OAG also collaborates with local talent development initiatives, including Turing College and Women Go Tech. 
With teams in both Vilnius and Kaunas, Lithuania now hosts over a third of OAG’s worldwide workforce. The company employs several hundred people globally, with headquarters in the UK and offices in the USA, Denmark, France, Germany, Singapore, China, and Lithuania. 
OAG works with a wide range of organisations across the global aviation and travel ecosystem, from airlines and airports to travel technology companies and financial institutions, with particularly strong demand across Europe, Middle East and Africa, North America, and Asia-Pacific. The company is now investing in expanding its data platform capabilities and exploring how artificial intelligence can unlock deeper insights from aviation data – work that will be supported by its Lithuanian teams.