Money Week

When the Berlin Wall fell, recruitment agent Tony Goodwin, 49, sensed a business opportunity. “I thought that whole swathes of Europe would soon be opening up to capitalism and would create a massive jobs market.” He spent the next two years “reading everything I could get my hands on”. By 1991, he “knew as much as anyone living in London about the situation in eastern Europe”. He also scoured newspapers for news of Western firms that were moving into eastern Europe. “When I spoke to the right people at these companies, I realised I was on to something.” Over the next year, Goodwin worked for two other recruiters before setting up his eastern-European-focused recruitment agency Antal in 1993.