The expansion of Siemens' operations in Romania, either through acquisitions, or through greenfield investments, has led to an increase in personnel at a rate of around 100 new employees per month.
"At present, around 3,600 people are employed in the activities Siemens is carrying out in Romania. Our personnel is increasing at a monthly pace of 100 people. If the overall economic growth rate maintains, this pace may be sustained on long term," stated Wolfgang Hirzi, CEO with Siemens, in his first interview since he was appointed as a CEO with the German group's domestic branch.
At the beginning of last year, Siemens had around 2,500 employees domestically, while the company's number of employees amounted to only 600 people in 2003. "Approximately 2,200 people are employed on the segment of software development alone, meaning around 7% of Siemens' global number of employees in this field. If we consider Siemens has 7,000 employees in Slovakia, and the country has 8 million inhabitants, the Romanian market's potential is huge," Hirzi also said.
The increase in the number of employees was generated both by Siemens' acquisitions domestically, and by the group's investments. The company's most recent acquisition in Romania is the Cluj-based Frosys automation company, which had around 80 employees. This is the second acquisition Siemens has made domestically, after having taken over, in 2005, Forte Company IT system integrator, with around 220 employees and turnover worth around 20m euros. Besides acquisitions, Siemens has also invested in production centres domestically. The most important such centres include the plant in Timisoara, Siemens VDO Automotive, a supplier of electronic systems for the car market. Other major investments are the two electronic part plants of Sibiu. All these investments have in their turn created hundreds of jobs.
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