Jeff Henley: Impressed by former East bloc economies

He told the BBC's World Business Report why.

"I think the expansion of the Union makes good sense. I'm a big believer in trade.

"We assumed that eventually (enlargement) was going to happen, and that gave us a better sense of future stability.

"But it really didn't enter into our (investment) calculus. We've been in many of the countries for at least a dozen years.

It's really amazing what's happened over the last dozen years or so Jeff Henley

"I think we had enough experience to be pretty confident that they were doing nicely, and would probably continue to prosper.

"I was in Warsaw on Monday and it's impressive what's going on.

"The economies are doing well, the people are very excited, they're very enthusiastic.

"It's really amazing what's happened over the last dozen years or so.

"We have good operations and strong market positions in most of those countries.

Cost advantage

We've actually in recent months begun to (open) regional competency centres, as we call them, to serve all of Europe.

"In the short run at least, they are much lower cost countries than most of Europe. There's good training, and there's high levels of education.

"There's a labour arbitrage that we're taking advantage of, to be honest.

"There are clearly some jobs that we would historically have put into the US or Western Europe.

"But also because the costs are so much lower, we're actually able incrementally to do more investment now, and do things that we couldn't have afforded.

"Also, if you increase your local presence, it does increase your brand in those countries.