Thursday, June 30, 2011

Finding Opportunities in Greece: Wishful thinking?





I was watching Bloomberg this morning at the fitness, as I use to do every morning of the week lately... most of the air time was spent on the fact the Greek parliament tries to pass legislation mandating 28 billion euros of spending cuts and tax rises over the next five years. If it goes through, and it will, as the Greek government has no better alternatives, each of the 10 million Greeks will ultimately be about 2,800 euros (US$4,000) poorer per year. That's a huge hit for the population knowing that the average monthly salary in Greece is about 650 to 800 Euro. It obviously depends on your education or if you have kids or being married and also on the field that you work, for example people who work in Banks, Military, Public offices their salary can reach around 1500 euro, but this is still very low compared to other European countries...

Even the high-tech "hot" jobs don't pay much compared to other countries part of the OECD (source: PayScale):


So opportunities you said? show me the money...

At the beginning, I was thinking global firms doing outsourcing of knowledge intensive works to Greece could be cost effective due to the relative low wages and the fact 48% of the greeks speak english or some english (Source: Eurobarometer 2005 Europeans and their Languages), but I've discovered today reading a bit Wikipedia that only 15% of the population currently holds a university degree, and many of the talents immigrate to other countries (I can understand why these days...).

So being the new paradise for high-tech outsourcing is the big no...

After all, when I've searched tonight on Google "Greece + Opportunity"
I got 135 Million hits... so if Google said so...


In conclusion, the only good business that could hugely grow in Greece is sadly debt collection services... also known as collection agencies...


A collection agency is a business that pursues payments of debts owed by individuals or businesses. Most collection agencies operate as agents of creditors and collect debts for a fee or percentage of the total amount owed.

If you want to open such a firm, I'm ready to invest.

- Yohan Albo


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posted by Yohan [Yonathan] Albo @ 10:25 PM

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