JOB announcements from Woodchester Investments and Oracle Corporation yesterday lend support to the drive to encourage financial services and software companies to set up data processing and tele service operations in Ireland.
Woodchester is going ahead with plans to set up a customer services and administration centre in Dublin for its European operations. The new operation is expected to employ 100 people with computing and language skills. Woodchester has applied for planning permission to develop a new 30,000 sq ft facility beside group headquarters.
Woodchester will invest about £7 million in the premises, information technology infrastructure and staff training. The company will get a State grant of about £1 million for the operation, it is understood.
The new centre will provide processing, new business administration, collections and accounting services for Woodchester group operations in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Britain, Denmark and Portugal. To be developed on a phased basis, it will also be responsible for the development of information technology for the group.
Construction of the news centre is expected to be completed by October 1997 - but recruitment has already started.
Centralising the administrative work would start before the completion of the new building, Woodchester chairman and chief executive Mr Craig McKinney said.
Woodchester, which employs 1,500 people and has gross assets of £2.4 billion is currently assessing the expansion of its leasing operations into Sweden.
The group's 54 per cent shareholder, troubled French bank Credit Lyonnais, is currently preparing a plan for the privatisation of the bank. This plan is to be presented to the French government by the end of the year and will then have to be assessed and approved by the European Commission.
French market sources expect the Credit Lyonnais plan to include the sale of the bank's stake in Woodchester. They forecast an announcement from the French bank before the announcement of financial results next April.
Oracle Corporation, which employs 80 people at its new European Business Centre in Dublin, is ahead of target with its plans announced in May. The world's second largest software company now expects to employ 400 people at its Dublin operations by the end of 1997, compared with an original target of 400 within three years.
An Oracle spokesman said 200 people would be employed by May 1997 in the tele service centre serving European markets. Oracle was talking to IDA Ireland about further expansion beyond the 400 jobs already announced, he said, adding that no final decisions had yet been made.
