In August 2015, the Irish company Barracuda FX officially confirmed the entry in Macedonia by opening a special research center. It was announced that the company would be operational in a month, i.e. in September 2015, and would employ 80-90 highly skilled staff or programmers.
The investment announced by the Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Pesevski was worth 1 million EUR.
The 2015 Central Registry data, however, show that the noncurrent assets of the company amounted to about 39,000 euros, and the company had only three employees. By the end of November 2016 the company had 7 employees.
One cannot find anywhere in the media reports accurate information about the specific type of research center in question. The only explanation was given by Deputy Prime Minister Pesevski upon the announcement of the investment.
"It is an unusual research center, we have not had such a center in Macedonia before. The goal is, to take what the company has as a main trading product for global markets and develop products in Macedonia in the other segments of financial operations", he said.
At the same press conference, Morris Carin, one of the founders of the company, said that the management team easily chose Macedonia as an investment destination.
"We have visited Macedonia several times by now. We were encouraged by what we saw, by the professionalism and the perspective... So we easily made the decision to come here. We hope that many foreign companies will follow our example", said Carin.
According to the official website of Barracuda, the company was founded in 2009 and it delivers software solutions to the global banking industry.