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Saturday,
October
18, 2003,
Chandigarh, India
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Wipro net grows 4 pc Subsidy for non-profit routes demanded HSBC to move more jobs to India Twice-a-week Gulf
Air flight to Kolkata
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Infosys, Fujitsu enter partnership Infosys has entered the area of product development in Asia Pacific region in partnership with Japanese telecom and information technology giant, Fujitsu. Infosys will provide co-development and functionality enhancement to Fujitsu suite of software products. Ketan Parekh group pleas rejected With the Company Law Board ruling against both the applications filed by Ketan Parekh group of companies on the stock market scam of 2001, decks may have been cleared for the government to be allowed to begin a probe into these 16 companies, sources said.
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Wipro net grows 4 pc
Bangalore, October 17 The New York Stock Exchange-listed company also upped its guidance for the third quarter at $ 241 million and said its IT business revenue would touch $ 1 billion this fiscal. Revenue during the corresponding July-September period last year was Rs 1,062.1 crore and profit Rs 220.40 crore. “Strong volume growth and declining pricing pressure resulted in revenue of $ 222 million in our global IT services business ahead of our guidance of $ 210 million,” Wipro Chairman Azim Premji said announcing the results. Premji expressed optimism over future business driven by healthy volume growth and stabilising prices. “This quarter, we saw customers demonstrating both growing confidence in our end-to-end service model as well as an increased willingness to increase spending,” Wipro Vice-Chairman and Wipro Technologies CEO Vivek Paul said. Wipro hired 3,091 persons including 1,061 for IT services and 2,030 for its BPO outfit Wipro Spectramind, during the quarter to touch a total employee strength of 24,265. The company added 35 new clients during the quarter, Paul said, adding that the billing rates were marginally better from them than the existing clients. “There is no war for talent. There is some more discipline. However, international players are still spoiling” (the situation) as they are “offsetting the lack of expertise with lower prices,” Paul said on customer’s expectation on pricing. Stating that Nasscom was lobbying with the US government to increase H1B visas from 65,000 to 80,000, Premji said the recent cut in H1B visas from 1.95 lakh to 65,000 would not affect Wipro nor the IT industry, adding that the cut would instead fuel increase in outsourcing. He said continued appreciation of Rupee puts significant pressure on business profitability.
Wipro wins award
Wipro Technologies said today it has bagged the “Asian Most-Admired Knowledge Enterprise award” for 2003 for creating knowledge-driven culture in corporates. Wipro Technologies was recognised in the second annual Asian MAKE study for creating corporate-wide knowledge-driven culture and delivering knowledge products, services and solutions, a company press release said here. The award was presented yesterday in Seoul.
— PTI
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Subsidy for non-profit routes demanded New Delhi, October 17 Private airlines officials believe that the government must offer subsidy for these airlines to share the burden of the Indian Airlines. Minister of State for Civil Aviation Rajiv Pratap Rudy had said over the weekend that the government was looking at auctioning the non-profit routes to the private airlines and that the Naresh Chandra Committee which is preparing a road map for the aviation sector will have guidelines on the matter. Sources in the private airlines said here that they had already conveyed their view on the matter to the committee. Besides they already identified some of the routes on which they were ready to operate. Until the government did not offer them subsidy on these routes, they would not be ready to opt for them. They pointed out that the government had wanted to push the private airlines on these routes, mainly in the North-Eastern sector and some other interior routes. The private airlines are looking for a minimum of 20 per cent subsidy to go on the routes which are not
profitable. The government wants to auction some of the non-profit route as part of the effort to bring Indian Airlines out of the red. The committee’s report which is likely to be made public later in the month is expected to work out most of the problems being faced by Indian Airlines. Most of the unprofitable routes on which Indian Airlines is operating are in north-eastern region, Jammu and Kashmir, Andaman and Lakshadweep islands. Indian Airlines was earlier able to sustain even on non-profitable routes owing to cross-subsidisation. The situation has changed now. Cut throat competition has made it impossible to sustain services on the unprofitable routes.
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HSBC to move more jobs to India London, October 17 The bank already has a large presence in India and the latest move is one of the biggest outsourcing moves by any British company to India. The announcement provoked furious reactions from unions. The decision by the bank, which employs 55,000 in Britain, follows similar moves by other companies, including BT, Goldman Sachs, Abbey National and Prudential. HSBC already runs a number of global processing hubs in Hyderabad and Bangalore in India and Malaysia. HSBC said the jobs involved —mainly processing work and telephone inquiries — would move between 2004 and 2006. About 1,500 jobs are set to go in 2004, a further 2,000 in 2005 and a further 500 in 2006. Operations in Brentwood in Essex, Sheffield, Birmingham and Cardiff will be worst hit. Bill Dalton, chief executive of HSBC’s UK operations, said the move was essential to the bank’s continued success. “As one of the world’s largest financial services companies, HSBC has a responsibility to all its stakeholders to remain efficient and competitive,’’he said. But Rob O’Neill, an official at Unifi, the banking workers’ union, said:“The world’s local bank has shown that if the job can be done cheaper somewhere else, then they’ll move it. We will fight tooth and nail to get the bank to reconsider its actions.” British financial services companies’ offshore operations have grown from 200 employees in 1996 to 3,000 in 2002, according to Unifi. The union has previously indicated that by the year-end, 3,690 jobs will be offshore and that this number will rise to 5,140 by the end of 2004.But Financial Times said some forecasts predicted that as many as 3.3 million jobs in the US and 2 million in Western financial services will be lost as a result of the trend to move jobs to lower cost countries such as India. In Britain, 2,00,000 job losses have been predicted by 2008. HSBC said the decision was regrettable but as a global bank it had to remain competitive on cost. Dalton said: “This includes increasing productivity and allocating resources to both developed and emerging markets. This is the best way of ensuring job security for our staff worldwide.” He said HSBC’s staff numbers had remained stable during the past five years in spite of a large number of job losses in the financial services industry. The bank said it hoped many of the job losses would be through voluntary redundancy, natural turnover or early retirement. The latest losses come on top of the 1,400 cuts that HSBC announced in June, for which it blamed a weak economy and rising costs. The bank said less than 70 of those had been through compulsory redundancy.
— IANS
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Twice-a-week Gulf
Air flight to Kolkata New Delhi, October 17 The airlines President and Chief Executive, Mr James Hogan, said here that both the new flights are to be operated under a code-share agreement with Indian Airlines. It would take the total number of cities to which Gulf Air flies in India to six. While terming India as an important country to which the airline operated 54 flights a week, officials refused to provide figures on the quantum of funds which the market generated or how large the Indian market was for the global operations of the airlines. However, Mr Hogan did point to the fact that the airline was doing its bit to promote tourism into India from different parts of the world. The Chief Executive also announced that the Bahrain-Athens-Singapore-Sydney flight, which the airline is to launch on November 23 this year, is to see Gulf Air having a code-share agreement with Air India on the Singapore-Sydeny leg of the flight Mr Hogan further said that the airline was in
talks with the airlines of India on developing certain routes. “It could be a special pro-rata agreement or a code-share agreement,” Mr Hogan said.
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| Infosys, Fujitsu enter partnership New Delhi, October 17 Infosys will provide co-development and functionality enhancement to Fujitsu suite of software products. The Indian company will partner Fujitsu in the area of middleware product development. Infosys also announced today that it has opened an offshore development centre totally dedicated to Fujitsu projects. The centre employs 50 people at present and will be scaled up as business grows. ‘’As we move ahead, Infosys will continue to help Fujitsu deliver high-quality and aggressive time-to-market solutions. The Global Delivery Model (GDM), pioneered by Infosys, will empower Fujitsu to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing market by leveraging IT to be a competitive advantage for them.’’ Prasanna Vatkar, Business Development Manager, Asia Pacific, Infosys Technologies said. Srinath Batni, Director and Member of Board - Asia Pacific region, Infosys Technologies said, ‘’our partnership with Fujitsu has enabled us to innovate with technology and IT solutions to bring tangible business benefits to the product development company. We have been able to creatively use technology to make the Fujitsu products more robust and flexible to meet rapidly changing market requirements.’’
— UNI
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Ketan Parekh group pleas rejected
New Delhi, October 17 The management of Ketan Parekh group of companies had filed two applications before the Company Law Board (CLB). One asked for transfer of cases to CLB Mumbai since the group’s registered offices are there. The other application wanted to obtain a copy of the much-publicised report by SEBI on the Rs 2,100 stock market scam. In its order on Thursday, the Principal Bench of CLB comprising chairman S Balasubramaniam and member K.C. Ganjwal ruled against both the applications and said hearing on the case would proceed soon.
— PTI
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Inflation rises
Auto exports up
Spice Telecom
ING Vysya MF
Y.K. Modi
Handicraft fair Konkan Railways
Parasrampuria
SBI donation
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Bangalore, October 17
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