Will the Obama's policy on US firm to pull back jobs have effect on India?

Sallie Mae, a US-based company which gives loans to students, Monday announced to move back as many as 2,000 overseas jobs, including those from India, even if it means an additional financial burden on the company because of higher labour expenses.

"It's the right thing to do," said Sallie Mae Chief Executive Albert Lord at a press conference which was attended by Democrat Congressman Paul Kanjorski and Senator Robert Casey in an apparent reference to the large scale job losses in the US in the last one year.

The value of a company's franchise is essentially measured in financial terms, but there are a lot of values in a company that relate to the long-term value of a franchise. It's a wise investment in the company's future, Lord said.

"The current economic environment has caused our communities to struggle with job losses. They need jobs, and we will put 2,000 of them into US facilities as soon as we possibly can," he added.

In the next 18 months, some 2,000 overseas jobs would be moved back to the US. These jobs are primarily in India, Mexico and the Philippines and are basically call centres, information technology and operations support positions.

The move would cost the company $350,000 per annum as the workers in the US would have to be paid a much higher wage than those in countries such as India.

Sallie Mae is the largest US-based student loan provider. It employs more than 8,000 people in the US. For quite some time, it has been struggling during the credit crunch to finance loans to students.

In the fourth quarter the company had reported a net loss of $216 million, in which it made $4.8 billion in student loans. Through its subsidiaries, the company manages $180 billion in education loans and serves 10 million student and parent customers.

Agencies

Vishal Info likely to buy firms in Europe

Mid-sized IT-enabled services and solutions providing company Vishal Information Technologies (VITL) is close to buying out two companies. Chennai-based VITL, a Rs 400-crore company, is looking at the inorganic route to expand its presence in international markets.

The company is in talks with two companies — one of them is a player in data digitisation and conversion/e-publishing company, while the other is a fund accounting/financial KPO company. This seems to be in synergy with own businesses. In order to fund these acquisitions, the company has recently issued global depository receipts (GDR) worth $30 million. This has been listed on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange. Six new equity shares will be issued on the conversion of each GDR.

Dilip Parekh, executive director, VITL, told ET that the company has identified a couple of companies in the UK and Sweden for possible buyouts. According to him, VITL was at an advanced stage of closing the deal. “We will be looking at two acquisitions with one having a size of $20-25 million and another will be $10-15 million.”

While this will be partly funded by the money raised through GDR, the balance will be through a share swap ratio. “The company will issue fresh shares to the target company, apart from the funds raised through GDR for the acquisition,” he said.

Founded in 2000, VITL is a subsidiary of Tutis Technologies, which specialises in biometric products, software development and consulting. VITL is a service provider to government and semi-government organisations, large and medium-sized companies, NGOs, universities, publishing houses and legal entities.

It focuses in the areas of providing solutions for the print production industry with services like e-publishing, e-book, print on demand, data and document management, data conversion, digital library management among others. It also has a subsidiary, Basiz, which is a fund accounting service KPO primarily focusing on servicing hedge funds, mutual funds, private equity firms among others.

Economictimes

Barclays to offshore 66 jobs to India

Banking major Barclays has announced plans to offshore 66 jobs from its site in Poole, Dorset, to India, sparking protests by bank employees and worker unions.

The bank said the redundancies were part of 1,100 job losses at Poole announced last year, alongside a decision to farm out some work overseas.

Finance union Unite, however, said that the scope of the job cuts was changing and that the 66 job losses were new.

Unite official Steve Pantak said, "The latest job cuts by Barclays in Poole are very alarming for us. The 66 roles are to be offshored to India. Unite believes that there is now real doubt about the future of Barclays in the Poole area.

"The decision earlier in the year to cancel the new building, coupled with the accelerated winding down of jobs in Barclays House, leads Unite to believe that there is a real threat to the future of all staff in Poole."

Pantak called on the bank to give solid assurances on its "commitment to Poole and the remaining jobs in Barclays House."

Earlier this week, Barclays said that it was cutting more than 100 jobs in Cardiff under plans to outsource work in a department that deals with accounts when a customer dies.

Source: Agencies