BAT chooses Bucharest for financial services centre

British American Tobacco (BAT), the largest consumer goods producer on the domestic market, has selected Bucharest to open a financial service centre – British American Shared Services Europe (BASS Europe), which will serve 36 European countries from Ireland and the UK to Romania, Bulgaria and Cyprus by 2010. BAT will hire 250 people over the next three years to work at the centre. “The selection process considered 19 locations in Europe and had an extensive set of criteria, but Bucharest won. Among the reasons that led to this decision is the professionalism of the workforce and the high productivity,” said Bart Maas, managing director of BAT Romania. BASS Europe will be the main European centre of financial services of the BAT group and operations will start in September. The centre will provide financial services, which includes supplier accounting, for most commercial entities of BAT in Europe, according to the officials of the company. BAT posted turnover worth 824 million euros on the domestic market, and was the largest consumer goods producer as a result. There are three important players that operate on the tobacco market – BAT, Philip Morris and Japan Tobacco International. The low labour costs and good level of language skills on the domestic market have encouraged several companies to open service centres in Romania.