As country manager, van Groos will oversee all of GE Money's Czech subsidiaries, including GE Money Bank, GE Money Multiservis and GE Money Auto.

Van Groos has worked at GE Money since 1998. He has held various managerial positions, including most recently general director of GE Money Bank in Austria.

Van Groos is Dutch. He has master's degrees in law and economics from Erasmus University in Rotterdam.

Ivan Jukl will replace Jitka Hanzlíčková in mid-March as chief executive of the state's external trade agency, CzechTrade. Jukl, who until recently was the commercial counselor at the Czech Embassy in Denmark, said his priority is to increase CzechTrade's client base.

Last year CzechTrade, which has 31 foreign branches, had 1,225 clients and mediated 211 export deals worth more than 1.3 billion Kč ($55 million).

CzechInvest, the state's inbound investment agency, has also announced a personnel change. The agency's long-standing communications director, Jana Víšková, recently left the agency after three and a half years. Alžběta Honsová, who has worked in CzechInvest's communications department since 2005, has taken over her position. Honsová has also worked at CzechTrade. She studied media and communications at Charles University in Prague.

Viktor Seige, a former government adviser for information technology systems security, is the new professional services manager at Reporters, a business intelligence solutions provider. Seige, who was most recently senior project manager at NESS Czech, is a renowned expert in business intelligence and data warehousing.

He is a graduate of the Mathematics and Physics Faculty at Charles University in Prague and a member of the editorial board at IT magazine Data Security Management.

IT firm IXTENT, which is based in the Czech Republic, has hired two new executives at its Slovak subsidiary. Jana Bobysudová was named marketing director at IXTENT Slovakia. Tomáš Kuba took over the position of account manager.

IXTENT also has operations in Poland and Romania.

Pavel Šindelář has moved from software company SAP Czech Republic, where he was software manager, to Facility, a management consulting firm. He has been appointed the company's new business development manager. Šindelář will be responsible for expanding Facility's consultancy services in cash management, risk management, controlling and other fields.