Some French buy some of Hungary

Paris, France-based contact center management solutions provider Teleperformance announced today the acquisition of seventy percent of the share capital of Photel Inc., a contact center leader on the Hungarian market. Budapest-based Photel generates approximately eighty percent of its revenues from within and twenty percent from without and operates approximately 100 workstations.

Photel specializes in developing sectors such as finance and insurance; automotive; transport; media; and IT and telecom. Photel operates on the local market and also runs multilingual offshore operations mostly with its Central and Eastern European neighbors. In the announcement, Teleperfomance chairman of the board Christophe Allard stated that board members were “really happy” about the acquisition, stating the acquisition was just a part of expansion, which now includes Teleperformance offices in Russia, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary. “For our Group, this regional market represents a very significant growth potential and a useful multilingual platform for our existing and future international accounts." Photel, Inc. CEO / founder Zsolt Lakatos, indirectly representing the firm’s bumpy road as of late, said that he hoped the move “will reinforce our position on the Hungarian market.”

Founded by Lakatos in 2002, Photel developed its call center activities on the Hungarian market. The company provides clients with outsourced CRM and contact center services, such as customer acquisition, customer service and technical assistance. Teleperformance is currently the world’s no. 2 provider of outsourced CRM and contact center services, and owns brand names TechCity Solutions and Cash Performance. In 2005, the Teleperformance Group achieved approximately €1.2 million in revenue (approximately US $1.5 million).

The Group operates 46,000 computerized workstations, with more than 60,000 employees across 268 contact centers (including 102 contact centers directly managed in clients’ premises) in 41 countries, and conducts programs in more than 51 different languages.