Romania has grown to become an important country in the region for some major international companies. They offer service to regional and European customers from centers located in Romania. Below we list a selection of these companies which either run regional businesses from Romania, or run service centers supporting their various operations around the world.

American pharmaceuticals company Alvogen is running a regional hub in Romania. In 2013, the company completed the deal to take over local drug producer Labormed. The American group was then planning to make Labormed a regional base in Central and Eastern Europe. Alvogen has commercial operations in 34 countries worldwide, with regional hubs based in North America, Romania and Taiwan.

Deutsche Telekom Business Services SRL, the company which operates German Group Deutsche Telekom’s service center in Bucharest, was looking to hire 23 people in January this year. The center in Bucharest provides human resource services to the group’s subsidiaries in the region. German group Deutsche Telekom launched the “T” brand on the Romanian market last year, replacing the Romtelecom and Cosmote brands.

Research company GfK announced last year that it will expand its office in Iasi, Romania, into a regional hub. The office is set to work as a hub for Europe and other regions and to gradually reach 400 employees. GfK Romania has operated on the local market since 1992.

US cereals producer Kellogg’s was looking for employees this April, for its new service center in Bucharest. Last summer, the company rented an office space of 2,500 sqm in Floreasca Park office complex in Bucharest. The center in Bucharest offers support for Kellogg’s European divisions.

Romania is one of the most important countries in Central and Eastern Europe for Chinese company Huawei. The company has a Global Service Center (CGS) in Bucharest, Romania, which provides technical support to European customers, as well as other clients in the world. In September last year, Huawei said it planned to make investments of EUR 100 million in the Global Service Center in Bucharest until 2018. The company also has a Global Network Operation Center in Romania.

Swedish group Ericsson runs a Global Services Center in Romania. The center located in Bucharest, which is one of the four Ericsson Global Services Centers and the only one located in Europe, serves regional and global customers. In September last year, the company announced that it planned to expand to operations at the local center and add 300 more employees.

German bank Deutsche Bank opened its DB Global Technology center in Bucharest last year, the fourth such center, after similar facilities in Moscow, Sankt Petersburg and North Carolina. The Bucharest center is to hire 500 people by end-2016. Romanian staff work on developing advanced technological solutions for several of Deutsche Bank’s activities. See pictures here.

This year, German railway company Deutsche Bahn opened an Accounting Center for Europe in Bucharest. The center will employ 150 by year-end, but the number is expected to increase to 600 by 2018. It manages accounting activities for Deutsche Bahn’s operations in 35 countries, outside Germany.  Deutsche Bahn is present in Romania through companies Schenker Romtrans and DB Schenker Rail Romania, controlled by its subsidiary DB Schenker.

Coca Cola HBC invested in Romania to turn it into an export hub. Its plant in Ploiesti, Coca-Cola HBC’s largest in southeast Europe, will sell Coca-Cola products in six European countries. The Coca-Cola GM for Romania also leads the Moldavian market.

Technology company Microsoft also runs two global business support centers (GBS) in Romania. One is located in Bucharest while the other one is in Timisoara, western Romania. Microsoft Romania was founded in 1996. Its number of employees increased to over 450 in 2013.

Telecom provider Vodafone opened a new shared services center in Bucharest, Romania in July last year. The center offers IT and client relation services for clients in UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and Ireland. It was the second such center opened by Vodafone, after Danubius NOC, which was opened in 2013. The Danubius center services some 90 million Vodafone customers in Netherlands, Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Greece, Albania, Malta and Italy, on network related issues.

Oracle offers services to its clients from several offices in Romania. Last year, Oracle’s president Safra Catz said that Romania grew up to become the fourth most important in the world and second in Europe, after the one in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. During her visit to Romania in 2014, Catz also said that the company was looking to expand its local operations and would start looking for locations outside Bucharest. The company had some 3,000 employees in Romania’s capital.

Mobile games producer King has opened the Bucharest office in 2011. Last year, the company has leased 1,700 sqm in the Opera Center office building in Bucharest, to expand its creative studio. King’s Bucharest staff develops and tests some of the most popular and bestselling online games, such as Bubble Witch Saga or the no. 1 game for Facebook and mobile, Candy Crush Saga.

American company CGS, a provider of outsourcing solutions, opened its fourth support center in Romania last year. The new center is located in Targu Jiu, Gorj county, while the other three are locate in Bucharest, Brasov and Sibiu. CGS provides customer care, technical support, help desk and telesales services, in over 18 languages. In Romania, the company has over 3,000 employees.

IT outsourcing company Stefanini has two service centers in Romania, in Bucharest and Sibiu. Last year, the company reached 1,000 employees in these two centers and was planning to hire 100 more. The service center in Bucharest, which Stefanini opened in 2004, was its first in Europe. The center in Sibiu was opened four years later, in 2008.

French call center operator Webhelp has more than 1,600 employees in Romania, in four centers, two of which are in Bucharest, and two in Ploiesti and Galati. It runs a total of 45 contact centers in France, Romania, Morocco, Madagascar, Belgium, Algeria and the UK. In early-March this year, the company wanted to hire 300 people via a one-day Facebook campaign.

Genpact, one of the biggest outsourcing service providers in Romania, offers its services from two local offices in Bucharest and Cluj. It employs over 2,000 people. Last autumn, the company decided to launch its own recruitment platform for Generation Y and Millenials candidates.

French group Societe Generale manages an outsourcing center in Romania that serves the subsidiaries in Europe. Societe Generale European Business Services (SG EBS) had 144 employees in 2013, the year when it also increased its turnover and profit by over 50%.

Indian software services group Wipro has development centers in Romania’s Bucharest and Timisoara. It works with some 600 employees in Romania, which offer support for its Eastern European clients. In October last year, the company announced its intentions to increase the local staff.

The HP Global e-Business Operations Centre (GeBOC) provides services to company’s customers and partners in the EMEA region. It is one of the largest Shared Services Center employers in Romania, with some 3,000 employees. The center was launched in 2005.

Capgemini, one of the largest providers of consulting, technology and outsourcing services in the world, offers IT support from the center in Iasi, opened in 2009. The Romanian team offers professional services to clients from France, UK, Germany, Spain and the US. In February last year, the company opened a new location in Iasi.

In January this year, Romanian Ioana Enache, the general manager of American group Amway’s operations in Romania and Bulgaria, also took the lead of the company’s business in Greece. She is running the company’s activities in these three countries from her office in Romania. Amway is one of the biggest direct sales businesses in the world. Amway Romania’s sales were about EUR 17 million, in 2013, according to official data from the Finance Ministry.

Andrew Peirson took over as managing director for Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) Romania and South-Eastern Europe (SEE) on April 1 this year. The managing director runs the business from the Bucharest and Belgrade offices. In Romania, he works with Marius Scuta, who is head of Office Department and Tenant Representation, and Silviana Badea, who joined JLL as head of Capital Markets for Romania.

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com

(photo source: freeimages.com)