Corporations Dow Chemical and IBM announced a significant deal which is set to upgrade business and investment interest in Greece. The two multinationals have agreed that Dow Chemical will also utilise IBM’s service centre in Athens as a base from which to offer electronic support concerning its global activities.
This deal involves the new centre that IBM created in Greece with the purpose of supplying big data and business analytics support to its multinational clients.
The announcement of the cooperation agreement took place after senior IBM and Dow officials met with Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras in Athens. Mr Samaras met with the chairman and chief executive officer of Dow Chemical, Greek Australian Andrew N. Liveris, and the general manager of IBM Europe, Rich Hume.
On leaving Samaras’ office, Liveris hailed the new agreement and was particularly encouraging regarding the course of the Greek economy: “We have witnessed a change in Greece. We have seen a recovery of confidence and credibility. We have seen liquidity return,” he said, praising the prime minister’s role in this direction. “We could have chosen any place in the world, any place in Europe, but we have chosen Greece.”
Hume declined to reveal any details about the agreement with Dow in terms of new jobs, the size of the investment and so on. Market professionals suggest there will be few new jobs but those created will be high-profile. They are expected to be for information technology experts, mathematicians and statisticians. The size of the deal is only known by the two partners.
It is certain, however, that the IBM service centre at the headquarters of its Greek subsidiary could become a global competition focal point. IBM already has such centres in locations such as Berlin, Beijing, Dallas, London, New York, Tokyo, Washington and Zurich.
Chairman and CEO of IBM Ginni Rometty stated her belief that both Dow and IBM will benefit from the innovation stemming from the new generation of talent and high specialisation available in Greece.
“We look forward to the opportunity to contribute to the implementation of Dow’s market-driven strategy,” Rometty said.
The Deputy Minister for Development and Competition in Greece Notis Mitarakis stated that as a result of the Dow Chemical-IBM cooperation a number of new high skilled jobs will be created in Greece.
“Daily, the climate for quality investments in Greece is changing,” Mitarakis said, who highlighted a renewed interest of foreign investors in Greece, because as he said, amongst others, in Greece there is a highly skilled new generation of people ready to enter the workforce.
Source: ekathimerini, ana-mpa