Barcelona gains weight in Microsoft. The US multinational has moved its digital sales hub for Western Europe from Dublin, the European headquarters of the technology giant, to the Catalan capital.
The hub currently has more than 40 employees from a dozen nationalities ---60% of them women----, coming from the Dublin headquarters. In fact, 80% of the workers who were previously in charge of the Spanish market from Ireland have moved to the new Barcelona hub.
The multinational founded by Bill Gates expects to continue expanding the workforce to reach some 250 employees in the coming months in the new hub, located on Ciutat de Granada street in 22@, in a building where Microsoft's video game firms Activision and King already have offices, according to Expansión.
The new center will serve companies in 13 European countries. Specifically, these are Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland, in addition to Spain. For their part, markets such as France and the United Kingdom will continue to be coordinated from Dublin.
The new opening in Barcelona is part of Microsoft's strategy to geographically distribute its digital sales area for large companies and SMEs, which began three years ago. The hub in the Catalan capital is the second that the multinational has opened as a result of this strategy, after the one it launched in Cairo, which is in charge of the Middle East and Africa.
"The choice of Barcelona as the headquarters for this new center represents a commitment by Microsoft to support the development of digital talent available in this area," said the Director of Companies at Microsoft Ibérica, David Hernández. According to the executive, the new opening also contributes to "reinforcing the city's attractiveness as a pole for attracting technology professionals from all over Europe."