Tuesday, September 30, 2008

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Satyam firing - in what a Style!

Forwarded by Venkat
Satyam computers is laying off its employees in a unique style.Though many walkins are being held to recruit freshers, its all hype to show that they have projects.Also they are getting 2 lakh of deposit money per each fresher.Even then huge number of freshers who are in pipeline to join are told to search jobs for
themselves.One is in as long as the project is in progress. Once completed the person is out,reason cited is ,the company is badly suffering from dearth of projects due to the Upaid case. On 22nd September,there is axeing of employees at Satyam’s Chennai centre,and a week ago quite good number of them are laid off at
their Hyderabad centre.The reason as told by the HR department is the company can’t bear the expenditure of employees as there are no projects and its not issue of performance as told to the outside world.And the ones retrenched are replaced by freshers who bring in 2 lakh per head.To the outside world the axed employees are told as having been kept under performance scanner while the main reason here is the financial position of the company.


While this being the case,Satyam’s exit process can be said to bit better than Wipro’s process.While at Wipro the laid off people are told by watchman itself not to come, Satyam people allow them atleast to enter the campus.But everything comes to you as sudden shock.This is just the tip of an iceberg.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

HSBC cuts 1,100 investment banking jobs

Forwarded by Venkat
Banking major HSBC has cut 1,100 jobs in its investment banking division due to turmoil in the financial markets, a media report said.

“HSBC slashed 1,100 jobs in its investment banking division as the financial group tightened its belt due to the slump in the financial markets,” The Financial Times reported on Thursday.

Pointing out that the cut is equal to about 4 per cent of HSBC’s total employee strength in its global banking and markets division, the report said the move comes as investment banks around the world are cutting staff and trimming costs in expectation of continued slowdown in the business.



“The cuts reflect HSBC’s gloomy prognosis for the world’s financial markets in 2009, although they also underscore the bank’s ambitions to focus its investment banking operations on emerging markets in Asia and the Middle-East, where executives believe it has a competitive advantage and the greatest opportunity for future growth,” Financial Times said.



About 500 of the employees, including both front and back office staff and permanent and temporary workers, were based in London, with the majority of the remainder in Europe and the United States, the newspaper said in a article published in its online edition.

According to the report, in the past two years, HSBC has realigned its investment banking operations to concentrate on providing financing and other risk management services to companies.

“The strategy followed an abortive attempt by HSBC to build a bulge-bracket investment bank by hiring hundreds of M&A bankers and beefing up its operations on Wall Street,” the report added.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Is one in 10 people employed in banking and financial services and IT industry are losing his job?

Forwarded by Venkat
One in 10 people employed in banking and financial services and the IT industry risks losing his job.


In February this year, Tata Consultancy Services announced that 500 of its employees have “voluntarily resigned” after an annual performance check. IBM followed suit with its downsizing plans and unconfirmed reports said the company had shown the door to almost 700 employees in India. The two companies were then roundly criticised for their obsession with handing out pink slips.

Just seven months later, those criticisms seem like a bad joke. Recruitment consultants now say every one in 10 people employed in India’s banking and financial services and the information technology industry risks losing his job because of the global financial meltdown.

The situation has become worse after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the sell-out of Merrill Lynch on Monday. At least three top recruiting firms in India say, in the last 24 hours, many companies have asked them to stop hiring.

Layoffs are still a highly emotive issue in India and no company is willing to put any number to the people being asked to ship out, but all of them are consistent about the fact that the annual performance reviews have become stricter this year.
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Satyam, for example, has denied the buzz that about 9 per cent of its employees may be fired. But the company’s official statement says that as part of its appraisal process, the company identifies “around 5 per cent” of its employees for “performance improvement”. That’s a substantial number, considering the software giant has around 50,000 employees on its rolls.

Wipro isn’t far behind. The company has reportedly put 4 to 5 per cent of its employees under the non-performance scanner. The company’s official position is that some employees have been asked to move on, but the number is significantly lower than 2,000.

It’s certainly not IT companies alone. A host of broking firms admit that many of their employees are on “paid holidays” — a luxury they can ill-afford. And already quite a few of them have “politely persuaded” some of their people to leave. The numbers are still small, but the trickle may soon turn into a deluge if the panic in the markets continues for a few more months, Even the manufacturing sector, which has been largely untouched by the turmoil, may tighten the screws as far as hiring is concerned.

The instant fallout of what’s happening on Wall Street becomes clearer if one adds the uncertain fate of the over 2,500 Lehman employees in India and the estimated job loss of at least 1,000 Indian employees at Hewlett-Packard following the company’s decision to eliminate nearly 25,000 jobs worldwide.

That the future is bleak becomes clearer from the fact that US employers are expected to make their deepest cuts in staffing in almost seven years. Just a day after the Lehman and Merrill news broke out, New York Governor David Peterson forecast that Wall Street might lay off over 40,000 workers. To put this in context, Wall Street’s job force totalled 181,000 in July, already down by 11,000 from a year earlier.

HR consultants in India say the impact of what’s happening in London will complicate matters further and Indian employees are bound to feel the shock. For example, the layoff figure in UK’s financial district is expected to reach up to 50,000 over the next two years. The collapse of Lehman, which has a staff of 4,000 in London alone, adds to the misery of the financial services industry in that country. And that’s horrible news for companies dependent on Europe’s BFSI segment, that has added more jobs than all other service sectors combined since 2004.

Greg Savage, International CEO of Aquent, a US-based global staffing firm, says he was in London last week and wasn’t surprised when he got calls from some of the earlier hard-to-get professionals looking for a job.

Savage, whose firm specialises in marketing, communications and creative talent, says things are tough in India as well and companies will obviously get rid of mediocre employees as they can no longer afford to operate in a high-cost environment. Besides, some of the excesses of the past, when companies recruited anybody with a pair of hands, are bound to have its fall-out.

But the picture isn’t entirely grim for job seekers in India, Savage says. Employees with sought-after skills may still be able to demand hefty pay from potential employers. “In the media space, for example, employees who have retooled their digital skills, will have no problem in getting chased by head-hunters,” he says.

Savage is right. Companies may have more bargaining power now than they did a few years ago, but they will still pay well for top talent as it doesn’t make sense for them to undercut employees they want to retain in the long term.

So things will pan out well for the creamy layer. But for the rest, the future is clear: prepare for more job losses. It’s that time when many may feel lucky to just have a job.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

DLF to issue pink slips to 300

Forwarded by Venkat
India’s largest real estate developer, DLF, is retrenching around 300 employees across all its centres and subsidiaries as it decides to slow down its project execution, especially in tier II cities, in the face of shrinking demand and expensive borrowing.

“Over the past month, around 300 employees have been asked to leave. The company had earlier decided to cut double the number, but later brought down the target,” said a DLF executive.

The DLF spokesperson, however, denied that the company was downsizing. Another senior DLF executive said tough times in real estate have forced the company to rationalise manpower and bring down costs.


He said the company has decided to go slow on the execution of projects, mainly in tier II cities, where there is hardly any demand for office and retail space at present.

“The management is not yet inclined to bring down rates even at the cost of losing business to rivals and has, therefore, decided to build less or no offices or malls in places where there is less demand,” the executive said.

Until a few years ago, DLF had its business concentrated only in the National Capital Region, especially Gurgaon. But the real estate boom of the past five years has seen the realty giant spread its activity across the country.

The company does business through a multitude of subsidiaries and its activities span almost all segments, including housing, offices, retail and SEZs.

But the global credit crisis and double-digit domestic inflation have slammed the brakes on the unprecedented realty growth in India. Indian firms are now looking for ways to deal with it. Most realty firms are cash-starved today, as much of the cash they earned during the good times were deployed in land acquisition.

Now, with home buyers deferring their purchases following multiple interest rate hikes, developers’ cash flow is choked.

Meanwhile, vacant space is piling up in several malls forcing developers to convert their under construction malls into office space.

But even office and IT space has started seeing oversupply in some pockets impacting rentals. A higher interest rate has also made borrowing expensive for developers. And for medium to small developers, bank credit is largely unavailable. In the given circumstances, some new small entrants are just falling by the wayside.

DLF is far bigger than any of its rivals and has the ability to sustain itself in a depressed market for much longer. A DLF executive said the company is reprioritising its projects. “

The company may sell some land to bring in additional cash, instead of initiating price cuts resulting in a market crash,” said the executive.

The biggest issue for DLF today is raising funds for its private unlisted promoter group firm DLF Assets (DAL), which buys all the office properties of DLF. Offices account for over half of DLF’s revenue. Global financial turmoil forced DAL to defer its listing in Singapore early this year.

The firm hasn’t since been able to raise enough funds to pay back DLF, to whom it still owes over Rs 3,000 crore for the properties it bought last year.
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CTS removes Subsidies for its Employees!

Forwarded by Venkat

Unconfirmed News:

IT major Cognizant has removed its food subsidy of INR 16 per day per employee. Calculate the total cost saved per annum is INR. 280000000.(16 * 65000 (no. of employees) * 22 * 12 (no of working days) ) Phenomenal!

Is it cost cutting? or like Narayan Murthy said “SW Engg don’t need subsidies!

Monday, September 22, 2008

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Wipro asks hundreds of US employees to proceed on leave

Forwarded by Venkat

Wipro Technologies Ltd. has asked hundreds of US employees to proceed on loss of pay leave. Last week Wipro lost two of their biggest BFSI customers, Lehman and Merill Lynch.
Wipro has had a ‘zero bench policy’ in the US since July 2008 and many more hundreds have been transferred back to their base location in India from the US.
The practice of asking people to apply for leave is one form of ‘benching’, where the company does not pay wages for periods during which the employee is not productive for the company.
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Next year there will be a big case against Wipro for payment of back wages and this will result in a big settlement worth many millions of dollars and a severe impact on US visa approvals for Wipro in future.
In 2007 Patni settled US back wages claims worth .4 million and you can google that up if you’re interested.