It's been a busy last 2 weeks as additional Jury Members and Speakers have signed on for the 3rd annual USA-Europe Business Services Summit & Awards. New Jury Members are from CzechInvest, Coopers Standard, Enterprise Estonia, CIMA, and the New York-based Polish American Business Club.

New Speakers are from Zoetis, Citi Services and Amazon Web Services.

Full details about the 19 September Summit & Awards, to be hosted in the members only Harvard Club of New York, are here: Www.SharedServicesEurope.com

The 3rd annual USA-Europe Business Services Awards to be held in New York, 19 September 2019 at the Harvard Club of New York. Nominations deadline is 2 August!
Link is: https://www.sharedserviceseurope.com/nominations-2019.html
In July, the Jury will receive the full list of all Nominations, to be ranked, resulting in our Short-List to be announced in early-August. These “Short-Listed” firms move on to the final vote, to be cast at the Jury Dinner one night before the USA-Europe Business Services Awards (19 September 2019).

Nominated companies will benefit from a range of free PR around the Summit & Awards, including:

• All Short-Listed BSCs and BPO/ITO providers will be listed individually and promoted in multiple media (online and social media); both in US, CEE, and western Europe.
  
• Both Short-Listed and Winning Companies will find ample opportunity to promote your company Brand (Employer Branding) and your distinctions to your Clients.
  
• Winners will be promoted throughout the full year 2019-2020, including via YouTube video of the Awards ceremony.
  
• Nominations submission is free and will take about 9 focused minutes to complete).
  
  

The event will attract more than 120 attendees at the Gala, including more than 40 US-based corporates with Business Services Centres in Europe. Submit Nominations here: http://www.sharedserviceseurope.com/nominations.html

Work has now officially started at the new Budapest office of International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF). The business services centre (BSC) of the US company will support the operation of the group through global financial services, reaching the targeted employee number of 100 by the end of this year.

The company is based in New York, and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. IFF mainly produces flavours and fragrances, used among others by the cosmetics industry and the food industry.
The company has 97 production plants and 105 R&D centres in 37 countries globally, and supplies to 39,000 customers with 13,000 employees over the world.
IFF's global financial service centre in Hungary started with about 50 employees, and this number will be doubled according to the plans by the end of 2019, to be over 100 people. In the company group's decision for a Hungarian investment, the strategic location that enables to cooperate with both US and Asian time zones, and availability of people speaking exotic languages also played an important role, besides the main business languages spoken.

Both Richard O'Leary, SVP and CFO of IFF and Jan Ambergen, MD of IFF Hungary, attended the opening ceremony in Budapest.

PubNub announced that it is continuing to expand internationally to meet the growing global demand for its leading realtime Data Stream Network (DSN).

With customers in nearly every country and increasing global volume, the global expansion will enable PubNub to more efficiently service its international clients and support the company's broadening global operations.

To meet the growing demand in Europe and on the back of a Series D round last month, PubNub has opened an office in London, which will house sales, business development, and customer support personnel, serving as a beacon for U.K. and European customers. In selecting a business location in Europe, PubNub opted for London due to its strong technology base, multi-national talent and recognized strengths in sales development and customer acquisition.

"We're delighted to be expanding our physical presence into Europe," said Casey Clegg, VP of Sales at PubNub. "Some of the most sophisticated technology companies in the world are in these regions and it's critical that we meet our customers where they live to service them most effectively."

In addition to the London office, PubNub has opened an engineering office in Katowice, where engineering and product teams will focus on delivering the PubNub promise of a highly reliable and stable global infrastructure at massive scale. Katowice is one of the fastest growing European technology hubs and was recently named first in fDi's Polish Cities of the Future for 2019/2020.

"Our focus on putting teams in place internationally solidifies our dedication to providing a world-class experience for our customers and their apps, products, and businesses. We look forward to continuing to identify and grow our international presence as more businesses rely on PubNub," said Steve Garritano, VP of Engineering at PubNub.

Schaeffler has leased almost 6,200 sqm in the Nowy Targ office project, which is being developed by Skanska in Wrocław. The company will relocate from Sagittarius Business House office at the beginning of 2020.
“Last year we decided to enter Wrocław, temporarily leasing an office on ul. Sucha. However, we were ultimately looking for a state-of-the-art office project that would meet our ambitious recruitment plans and create the best working conditions for our team of several hundred employees. We decided in favour of Nowy Targ, which is a conveniently located office development that offers top-tier standards and access to a wide range of services and amenities,” explained Anna Berczyńska, former managing director at Schaeffler Global Services Europe. Up to 800 people will be employed in the centre.
Schaeffler has been in Poland since 1987 and the company’s service centre has been operating in Wrocław since 2018 under the name of Schaeffler Global Services Europe.
With around 92,500 employees, Schaeffler is one of the world’s largest family-owned companies. It has a worldwide network of manufacturing locations, research and development facilities, and sales companies in around 170 locations in more than 50 countries. The tenant was represented by JLL in the transaction.

The new location will play a key role in delivering services and business solutions to Maersk Drilling’s global operation.

Maersk Drilling is a value-driven Scandinavian company that supports global oil and gas production by providing high-efficiency drilling services to oil companies around the world. Their technologically advanced fleet of 23 drilling rigs is among the youngest in the industry and ensures the highest level of safety. They build their service around a highly skilled and committed workforce of 2,850 on- and offshore professionals, state-of-the-art drilling rigs and 40 years of experience operating in some of the most challenging environments on the planet.

In order to retain its competitive global position, Maersk Drilling continuously looks for ways to improve and adapt its business and processes. The opening of the company’s new office in Gdańsk supports those efforts.

”To support our global operations, we need a strong support set-up. Gdansk was chosen due to its access to a large talent base within the maritime and offshore areas. Furthermore, with its central location and easy accessibility, Gdansk will also cater to the need for proximity to several other Maersk Drilling locations,” says Mikael Fredsted, Managing Director of Maersk Drilling Gdansk.

The company’s office in Gdansk will mainly be delivering support to Maersk Drilling within the areas of HR administration and coordination, supply chain activities, as well as IT offshore services.

”We are looking for talents and highly skilled people in Gdansk, as we have and will be hiring across seniority and specialists levels within all the above areas,” Fredsted continues.

Sony Pictures Entertainment Global Finance and Accounting Division is currently defining its roadmap to transform the organization from a Line of Business and territory orientation to one which is global, enterprise-based, focusing on process improvement, standardization, reducing complexity and the use of technology. The global team’s objectives are to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the overall team while enhancing the value and accessibility of the data created by the accounting processes which will enable the commercial teams to drive toward greater revenue growth and margin improvements.
The brand new Sony Pictures Global Financial Operations EMEA entity in Poland will play an integral role in helping guide the transformation of SPE’s Finance and Accounting organization.
The responsibilities of the new team will include, but not be limited to:

• working with Hub colleagues in establishing a viable and sustainable working outsource model with partner Capgemini.
  
• play a pivotal role in defining both the operational and strategic elements of that relationship
  
• maintain a global perspective to ensure that the evolving Finance Division always takes into consideration the broadest aspects of every challenge and opportunity encountered
  
• be a member of the team who own SPE’s financial systems and is responsible for developing a roadmap to rationalize our current landscape from a federation of bespoke applications into one that is more efficient and harmonized across our differing business models leveraging state of art technology platforms which will support SPE well into the future.
  

The new organization led by Artur Gronkiewicz, SPE’s long-serving Accounting Leader and finance expert, is based in Gdynia.
Sony Pictures Global Financial Operations EMEA team constitutes of a group of very experienced accounting subject-matter experts with superb track record experience in supporting SPE’s EMEA territories.

In Romania, the Webhelp has 4 operations centers (Bucharest, Iasi, Ploiesti, Galati) and a team of 2,000 people.
Groupe Bruxelles Lambert (GLB) has begun exclusive negotiations to acquire a majority shareholding of the Webhelp group, together with the shareholders and co-founders of Webhelp, Olivier Duha and Frédéric Jousset, who will retain their role as founding executive directors and the team current management.
Founded in 2000, Webhelp is today one of the global leaders in providing customer relationship management and BPO (business process outsourcing). After purchasing the majority stake in KKR in 2015, the Webhelp group doubled its size and set a target of EUR 1.5 billion in turnover in 2019.
Webhelp develops innovative solutions based on synergies between consulting, technical and omni-channel services, thanks to its 50,000 employees, working in 36 countries. This performance is the result of an organic and external development strategy, which GBL wants to maintain and accelerate in collaboration with the two co-founders and the management team.
As a result of this transaction, GBL will acquire the majority shareholding of Webhelp, the company having a value of EUR 2.4 billion. It is expected that the legal documentation will be signed in early August to complete the transaction after obtaining the necessary endorsements during the fourth quarter of 2019.

As part of the plan to expand their operations and become an European front runner in cloud technology and methodology, Cloudeon has opened a Center of Excellence in Vilnius. The company plans to hire up to 20 people this year and double the size of the team next year.
Founded in Copenhagen, Cloudeon is the leading Danish cloud company that provides innovative technologies for businesses to accelerate and fully digitalise their potential. The client base consists of businesses from both the private and public sector including the Danish State Railways, Danish telecommunications company TDC Group as well as both international and Danish enterprise businesses.
John Vindahl Fabienke, VP of Professional Services, from Cloudeon explains that the choice of Vilnius was due to his own previous positive experience of working in Lithuania.
“In the context of digitalisation, cloud technology will undoubtedly play a major role in the future’s digital economy. Cloudeon brings specialised knowledge and experience to the growing IT sector in Lithuania, and this will create new jobs and attract skilled professionals”, Virginijus Sinkevičius, Minister of Economy of Republic of Lithuania states.
Mantas Katinas, Managing Director of Invest Lithuania, also sees the office opening as an indication of the strength of the local IT talent pool, and he believes that the company will help drive the sector forward: “Lithuania has always invested in nurturing world class professionals. Cloudeon will add to the proliferation of tech companies in the country, which will further enhance potential in cloud computing, AI and big data.”
Cloudeon was established in 2016 and has grown from 6 people to +100 people in 3,5 years. The new Cloud Centre of Excellence in Vilnius is part of the company plans for further growth along with an international outlook.

McKesson Corporation celebrated the opening of a new office location in Vilnius, Lithuania for its McKesson Europe business. The new McKesson Business Services site, which recently began operations in the city centre, will advance McKesson Europe’s strategic growth initiatives and position the company to successfully compete in the healthcare market of the future.
The ceremonial event was attended by members of McKesson’s executive team, including Britt Vitalone (EVP & Chief Financial Officer, McKesson Corporation), Kevin Kettler (Chairman, McKesson Europe) and Alain Vachon (Chief Financial Officer, McKesson Europe), together with Lithuania representatives Virginijus Sinkevičius (Minister of the Economy and Innovation of the Republic of Lithuania), Remigijus Šimašius (Mayor of Vilnius) and Mantas Katinas (Managing Director of Invest Lithuania).
Initially focusing on financial services, McKesson Business Services will address the needs of evolving healthcare by improving the speed, efficiency and quality of the company’s finance operations, while providing an exceptional work environment for its employees. McKesson will be located at the “Business Stadium” – a multifunctional business complex located in the city centre of Vilnius.
“During our site visits in Vilnius we met with local government authorities, recruitment and labour market experts, and held engaging and productive discussions. We are excited to establish our presence in Vilnius and are confident in its contribution to the future success of our company”, said Alain Vachon, CFO McKesson Europe.
“The team at Invest Lithuania is privileged to have had the opportunity to work with the experienced and visionary team at McKesson. We feel that the company and Lithuania are a natural fit as we share the same values – a striving for excellence in everything we do and a commitment to producing only the best results”, said General Manager at Invest Lithuania Mantas Katinas.