Salomon Securities, a professional services firm providing corporate finance & capital markets advice to entrepreneurs, governments & businesses, has established its new headquarters in Vilnius.

The company, which draws its roots, brand and heritage from Salomon Brothers Investment Bank, is looking to source a team of 75 skilled professionals that will include management functions, through to IT development, sales & financial advisory specialists. Salomon’s key focus is to bring its internationally located clients into Lithuania and aims to become the market leader in creating FDI plus institutional capital market liquidity for Lithuania. The company provides post BREXIT solutions to entrepreneurs, businesses and governments via two distribution channels – traditional face to face advisory or through its own proprietary Fintech platform. Its global portfolio of clients ranges from start-ups to publicly listed businesses.

The company’s new HQ in Vilnius will contain its front, middle and back office teams, and provide an end to end service to its clients wherever they may be – all from Vilnius. Lithuania will provide Salomon Securities with a multi-lingual hub in an efficient time zone through which it will service its international clients 365 days a year.

For Mantas Katinas, General Manager, the establishment of the Salomon Securities headquarters in Vilnius sends out a strong signal to the global market that Lithuania is serious player when it comes to financial services: “As we’ve seen in the past and now witness in the case of Salomon Securities, Lithuania is able to provide the talents that perform on the highest level – consulting businesses, optimizing complex processes and helping enterprises transform.”

The award-winning Directory of Business Services Centres across Central Eastern Europe will be published in early June, just in time for first distribution at the German Outsourcing Forum in Berlin (4-5 June). BSCs/BPOs are invited to submit (free) Listings update here – deadline 25 May: http://www.europeanbusinessservices.com/submit-directory-listing.html

Distribution starts in June at Germany Outsourcing Form in Berlin (4-5 June); ABSL conference in Warsaw (13 June); ASPIRE conference in Krakow (18 June); Deloitte's annual SSC Summit in Lisbon (10-11 September); USA-Europe Shared Services Summit in New York (19 September); CEE Business Services Awards Gala (January 2020) in Warsaw; and at several additional, focused SSC/BPO conferences during the full year (Hungary, Romania, Czech, Lithuania, etc.)

SSON's annual Summit in Lisbon was a big success, with well over 600 attendees. Both Session Summaries and nearly 100 photos have been posted here.

The Awards event distinguished the following:

Automation Impact Award: Winner: Credit Suisse; Honorary Mention: Mondelez (Finance Automation with RPA)

Business Transformation Impact Award: Winner: Coca-Cola European Partners; Honorary Mention: Credit Suisse
Change Management Impact Award: Winner: Abbott; Honorary Mention: OMV Petrom
Creative Talent Management Impact Award: Winner: Mondelez; Honorary Mention: Abbott
Customer Centricity Impact Award: Winner: Deutsche Telekom European Services AG; Honorary Mention: Equinor
Process Improvement & Value Creation Impact Award: Winner: EDP Group; Honorary Mention: 3M Global Service Center EMEA
SSON Community Impact Award: Winner: Chris Gunning, Global Functional Owner – Centres Of Excellence, Apollo Tyres

Nominations are still open for the 3rd annual Summit and Awards, to be held at the iconic Harvard Club of New York.

Www.SharedServiceEurope.com

With more than 30 Jury Members confirmed, and 15+ Speakers, the annual gathering has become THE meeting place for top US executives with Business Services operations in Europe.

The Tesco Group will set up a business services and technology centre in Budapest creating 800 jobs.

The centre will employ young graduates speaking foreign languages in the areas of payroll, labour administration, customer support service and product administration.

“It testifies to the success of a shift in Hungary’s economic policy that an increasing number of foreign companies are bringing service centres to our country,” said Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, noting that Budapest had won the project ahead of five contenders from within and outside of the EU.

Talentuno, a Budapest, Hungary-based HR tech startup, raised €4m in Series A funding. The company intends to use the funds to accelerate geographic expansion – with Poland next in line – and strengthen its technological and IT solutions.

The official Launch event takes place in Warsaw on 23 May from 18:30 at Endorfina Foksal, Pałac Zamoyskich, ul. Foksal 2. SSC executives have Complimentary admission. Registration here: https://www.hrtechnight.pl/

The round was led by two Hungarian VC firms: Hiventures Ventures Fund Management Plc. and Bonitás Venture Capital Fund Management Ltd.

Launched in September 2018, Talentuno provides a platform that allows users to recommend their acquaintances for new jobs, and earn significant amounts of commission on successful recommendations. In this community recruitment model created by the company, anyone can become a so-called “MatchMaker” – a freelance recruiter. In Hungary, more than 6,000 Matchmakers signed up for the platform so far, who recommended nearly 7,000 candidates.

More than 100 companies already use the platform including Fortune 500 companies, who have posted more than 500 positions on Talentuno.

The company’s management has also engaged in first discussions with London-based investors for its next round of appproximately €15 million, which will accelerate its UK expansion in 2020.

Lufthansa Industry Solutions, part of Germany's Lufthansa Group, said it has taken over Albania-based IT service provider Applications Management Development (ADM) for an undisclosed sum.

The Albanian IT service provider will operate under the name Lufthansa Industry Solutions, while AMD's former managing director Uwe Fischer will continue to run the business.

“Lufthansa Industry Solutions is pursuing a consistent growth strategy to meet the rising demand for IT services,” the company’s managing director, Bernd Appel, said. “With the acquisition of AMD, we have now for the first time also brought additional capacities into the company from the external market. The quality of the work performed by AMD impressed us from the very start.”

Since its creation in 2017, AMD has been providing IT services for Lufthansa Industry Solutions as a nearshore partner. The Albanian company has more than 120 employees and is particularly active in the fields of UI (Angular, JSF, React), portals (Sharepoint, Camunda), mobile (iOS, Android), Java, front and backend development and test automation.

The construction of the new World Bank office in Sofia will begin in July 2019, with the first-stage of the project due to be complete within two years. The Sofia location will focus on IT and Financial Management for the World Bank. In order to fulfill the terms of a subsidy agreement with the Bulgarian government, the World Bank has commited to hire 300 people within 5 years. (Bulgaria will provide subsidies of about 5 million Euro for the project.)

This is the second such World Bank shared service centre outside America, the first one located in India.

"The establishment of the structure in Sofia will have a positive impact on the economic environment in the country," said Vladislav Goranov, Minister of Finance. "In addition, the presence of an authoritative organization such as the World Bank in Bulgaria will further enhance the prestige of our country to the international investor community as an attractive destination for business and investment," the minister added.

NEC Corporation announced (in December) the acquisition of KMD Holding ApS, the holding company of KMD A/S (KMD), the largest Danish IT company. NEC is acquiring KMD for approximately 8 billion Danish Kroner (DKK) from Advent International, one of the world’s largest and most experienced private equity investors. The acquisition was completely in March 2019. KMD operates a major IT SSC in Warsaw.

NEC plans to to accelerate its global safety business, which is a focus of the company’s “Mid-term Management Plan 2020.” The acquisition will also support the “NEC Safer Cities” program, which includes utilization of its advanced biometric and AI technologies for public safety, digital government, and smart transportation applications.

“Denmark and the United Kingdom are considered European role models for the implementation of unified digital government measures in order to improve administrative services and reduce costs,” said Takashi Niino, President and CEO, NEC Corporation. “Through this acquisition, NEC will acquire a business model that leverages platforms in the digital government domain as it aims to expand business from northern Europe to the whole of Europe and globally.”

KMD provides software and IT services in Denmark with SaaS offerings and other models that generate recurring profit, NEC says. It has broadened its portfolio in a number of key verticals with successfully strategically executed mergers and acquisitions, and has a strong customer base among central and local governments and a wide range of software supporting digitization in Denmark, which ranked at the top of the “UN E-Government Survey 2018.”

“This is an historic moment for KMD. Becoming a part of NEC will give KMD a new and very robust platform for the strategic development of our business. NEC develops cutting-edge technologies and has a global organization with strong capabilities,” said Eva Berneke, CEO, KMD.

NEC believes it will benefit from synergy with KMD’s experience and software portfolio for the public sector, which NEC wants to address with its “NEC the WISE” AI technology products and “Bio-IDiom” biometric technologies.