The decision in favour of Sorocaba was based on the high level of IT experts in the local area. Sorocaba has five leading universities that train information technology specialists. According to the US bank Goldman Sachs, Brazil is one of the four largest and fastest growing emerging markets, along with Russia, India and China, where the IT market is also considered to have a great potential. According to market researcher IDC, the Brazilian IT market grew by approximately 25% in 2007.

"The high growth potential of the Brazilian economy and the dynamically growing IT market open up interesting business opportunities for us”, says Ulrich Dietz, Chairman of the Executive Board of GFT. "With the newly inaugurated development centre, we will be mainly supporting Brazilian and US banks in the modernisation of their IT systems. Apart from Spain and India, Brazil is an important component of GFT's international development and our team in Sorocaba is highly motivated, well-qualified and already working for customers in New York, London and Frankfurt. As a result of the technical competence of our Brazilian bank experts, we were recently awarded a project for a European bank whose rollout involves not only Brazil, but also our divisions in Spain, the UK and Germany."

The expansion of the offering in Brazil underlines the GFT Group’s strategy to promote the global delivery model. Working with their requirements, this model gives our customers the flexibility to use the technical expertise, as well as the cost benefits, of the individual development centres. “The demand for global delivery is on the rise among banks and industrial enterprises. The growing number of legal compliance requirements and the necessity to support technical innovations with IT result in increased IT investments. In this way, enterprises are able to substantially reduce the cost of IT services, while at the same time expanding IT functionalities, even in difficult times. Thus, they can respond quickly and easily to new opportunities,” says Ulrich Dietz, Chairman of the Executive Board of GFT.