Panos Panay, Amazon’s head of consumer electronics, has been selected to manage the company’s move into Cyprus.
Panay joined the global conglomerate in 2023 following 19 years at Microsoft and has been running the consumer electronics business in his tenure – including Alexa, Echo and Fire TV.
Sources close to Nicodimos Damianou, deputy minister of research, innovation and digital policy, said Cyprus was attracting fintech companies that had been headquartered in London but sought licenses in euros following Brexit.
The island’s fast-growing information and communications sector is outperforming other areas of the economy, including accommodation and food services.
According to latest data from the Statistical Service of Cyprus, CySTAT, information and communications contributed 11.1% of the country’s gross domestic product in 2024, compared to 6.6% for accommodation and food services activities.
The ICT figure rises to 14% when measuring indirect as well as direct investment.
Cyprus’s ambitions as a tech hub were reflected by President Nikos Christodoulides’ trip to California earlier this month, which promoted the island’s investment and partnerships with major tech companies, start-up accelerators and venture capital funds.
The rise of the island’s tech sector has been reflected in monitoring by the Business Facilitation Unit (BFU) which tracks new foreign companies registering or expanding operations in Cyprus.
Since 2022, nearly 2,300 foreign companies have registered with the BFU, including 95 in the first three months of 2025.
Over one in three (36.2%) of all foreign companies arriving in 2024 were involved in software development and video games, up from 25.9% in 2023.
Along with Amazon, meetings were also said to be held with Oracle, Google, OpenAI, Plug and Play, Nvidia and Tenstorrent.
The post Executive selected to spearhead Amazon’s move into Cyprus appeared first on UKTN.
