Software company and IT services provider Caspio will open a research and development center in Krakow. It has leased nearly 500 sqm in K1, the tallest office building in Kraków, where it will open its R&D center. "We are excited about our continued growth in Poland and look forward to expanding further once we move to the new offices,” says Frank Zamani, the CEO and founder of Caspio. “Due to the availability of well-qualified staff, Kraków is a very attractive location for IT companies.”

Caspio will move into the property in two phases at the end of 2018 and at the beginning of 2019.
This transaction also shows the complementary functions of serviced offices and traditional office space. The tenant, who was previously using the flexible conditions offered by Regus, decided to move into its own office as the next step in its development,” says Agnieszka Kuehn, a senior consultant at Savills. The landlord of K1 was advised by JLL.

Key move. PwC CEE partners elect Nick Kos as CEO starting July 1. PwC Central and Eastern Europe, the professional services firm, has announced the election of Nick Kos as its new CEO for a four year term, with effect from 1 July 2018.


Kos is currently the country managing partner of PwC Hungary and has held several leadership roles in the region. He has been involved in serving several major clients of the firm in Hungary and CEE, such as NOKIA Group, MOL and Diageo.He will take over from the current CEO Olga Grygier-Siddons, who steps down as CEO at the end of her current four-year term on 30 June 2018.


Nick Kós said: “I’m honoured to have been elected as CEO of PwC CEE. This is an exciting time for PwC in Central and Eastern Europe and it is a privilege to lead our more than 10,000 people.”

In western Ukraine, PwC Ukraine is in the process of hiring 350 new professionals to staff its new Shared Delivery Centre in Lviv, its first in Ukraine and third in CEE. PwC Poland, with around 4,500 professionals the firm’s largest organisation in the CEE region, has announced that it will relocate its Krakow operation to a larger office to accommodate for growth.

Recently opened in early August, the center aims to employ 200 to support Computacenter's German operations.

Computacenter's divisional head of group managed services Paul Anderson said that while the firm did see "financial benefits provided through labour arbitrage", the right-shoring move is not just about cost-saving. When assessing options as to where Computacenter's next facility should be based in support of our global delivery strategy, it became clear that Poland was the most strategically advantageous location," he said.

"Not only does Poland has a strong reputation for shared service centre delivery… the fact that there is a strong German speaking capability was also appealing, which in turn allows us to access the vast pool of talented German-speaking graduates to further expand Computacenter's exceptional services."

He added that Computacenter is recruiting to a team of 200 IT service desk analysts and infrastructure specialists.

"The moves is intended to support our German operational delivery capability and support an onshore and nearshore delivery strategy, not necessarily to focus on the CEE market."

The new centre will join Computacenter's global network of service centres in Hungary, Spain, South Africa and Malaysia.

In an interview with Emerging Europe, Donald Murray, CEO of Rolls-Royce Poland, said RR continues to expand its Krakow-based shared services center. Video: https://emerging-europe.com/multimedia/rolls-royce-eyes-poland-expansion/

According to Puls Biznesu daily, American Express is planning to open a service center in Poland and employ up to 2,000 people there. The issuer of payment cards is looking for a place for a service center, which will initially employ 500, and ultimately - up to 2000 people. Warsaw is in a battle with Budapest and Prague.

Led by Stephen J. Squery, American Express may be another well-known brand from the financial services sector that will enter Poland after JP Morgan and Standard Chartered.

“The company is looking for a bigger office than it needs for 500 employees. Ultimately, it can have more than 1000. Warsaw competes with Prague and Budapest, being the strongest player on the list. The center is to be opened by the end of 2018”, said PB's unidentified source.

The company has not yet officially announced the decision, and is officially “just looking around”.

“American Express employs 150 people in two offices in Warsaw. We are a global company that supports card users, resellers and business partners through a network of offices in the US and other locations. We intend to develop business in the United States and beyond. From time to time, we evaluate the condition of our properties, checking if they meet our growing needs. We are considering opportunities, also in Warsaw and other places in the region. It's just a study. We have not made any decisions”, said Doug Smith from the American Express press office.

Krzysztof Senger, a member of the board of the Polish Investment and Trade Agency (PAIH), refuses to comment. It will probably apply for a grant.

An American Express investment would not surprise experts. “Thanks to the entry of JP Morgan, the expansion of service centers in Poland, which belong to financial institutions, and more recently Standard Chartered decisions, subsequent players start talks with us. I was in New York in meetings with potential investors”, said Senger, who attended the USA-Europe Shared Services Summit & Awards in New York in June.

In the autumn of last year, JP Morgan announced that it is opening an office in Warsaw, where it will employ 3,000 people. The company is led by Slawomir Soszynski. And in July, Standard Chartered bank announced that in September it will open a business center in Warsaw, where 150 will work, and within five years - 750 people.

Brexit impact?
The European headquarters of American Express since the 1960s is located in the British city of Brighton on the English Channel. The company also has a customer service center and employs about 3 000 people.

Denver-based electronics component distributor Arrow Electronics continues to expand in Gdańsk, where it opened in early 2018 at the Olivia Business Centre. And with that, the company is also adding employees. Poland is not new territory for the US distributor, the company has already had a foot in the country for more than eight years with offices in Krakow.

Arrow continues to recruit new employees in customer service, engineering, finance, human resources and logistics/supply chain management across various qualifications and educational degrees.
"The metropolitan region of Gdansk is fast-growing, and we are delighted to be part of this dynamic," says Adam Stoch, VP at Arrow Services Sp. z o.o.. "In particular, regarding new technologies and future markets, Gdańsk is one of the most important centers in Eastern Europe, which is crucial for us in our site selection process."

The investment was supported by the Invest in Pomerania initiative, in particular Pomerania Development Agency and Gdańsk Economic Development Agency (InvestGDA).

The Poland Clariant SSC belongs to the Global Business Service (GBS) organization of Clariant, which internally runs transactional processes. The Łódź centers are meant for the end-to-end procedures in the regions of Order to Cash (from product order via delivery till debt collection, and supervision of logistic and transport and managing export-import transactions), Data to Insight (financial analysis), and Source to Pay (from purchasing process till clearing for invoices). The business partners and clients of Clariant from the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and Europe are catered to by the Polish office. Clariant only has two centers of this type in the world.

Clariant recently expanded its new service lines such as Order Management–collecting and processing orders from customers of the company, and adding more competencies in managing procurement and logistics operations, which are expected to lead to surged employment at Shared Service Center. The center has grown and now employs more than 300.

Clariant Shared Service Center Poland’s Head Tomasz Leśniewski said, “We welcome both recent graduates as well as experienced specialists who speak fluently in one of the following languages: English, German, Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese or Turkish. We look for people who will be responsible for servicing Clariant’s departments worldwide in the area of accounting and logistics as well as providing complex support in the field of international purchasing processes. Additionally, all employees are offered a social package that provides, among other, private medical care and a Multisport card.”

The Poland Clariant SSC belongs to the Global Business Service (GBS) organization of Clariant, which internally runs transactional processes. The Łódź centers are meant for the end-to-end procedures in the regions of Order to Cash (from product order via delivery till debt collection, and supervision of logistic and transport and managing export-import transactions), Data to Insight (financial analysis), and Source to Pay (from purchasing process till clearing for invoices). The business partners and clients of Clariant from the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and Europe are catered to by the Polish office. Clariant only has two centers of this type in the world.

Clariant recently expanded its new service lines such as Order Management–collecting and processing orders from customers of the company, and adding more competencies in managing procurement and logistics operations, which are expected to lead to surged employment at Shared Service Center. The center has grown and now employs more than 300.

Clariant Shared Service Center Poland’s Head Tomasz Leśniewski said, “We welcome both recent graduates as well as experienced specialists who speak fluently in one of the following languages: English, German, Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese or Turkish. We look for people who will be responsible for servicing Clariant’s departments worldwide in the area of accounting and logistics as well as providing complex support in the field of international purchasing processes. Additionally, all employees are offered a social package that provides, among other, private medical care and a Multisport card.”

The German company has decided to open its service center in Pécs, after having a strong manufacturing presence in the country for 24 years. Founded in 1917, the family enterprise has 12,000 employees globally and an annual revenue of 2,25 billion euros.

The investment will bring 50 new jobs to the city of Pécs, and the center will first provide services support and consulting to German and other international customers. Andor Beck, Managing Director at Viessmann's Hungarian subsidiary explained their choice regarding Pécs as a location with the huge number of university students, German speakers and its modern offices.