Satyam wins $8 mn worth new deals in Q2

Mahindra Satyam said on Wednesday it had won 30 million dirhams ($8 million) worth of new contracts in the Middle East and North Africa region in the July-September quarter.

Mahindra Satyam is planning to double its business in the region in the next 18 to 24 months, said a company statement.

Earlier the company had said that it is winning new outsourcing deals, but business is yet to see a total turnaround as some cautious clients wait for stability to return to the company.

“While there have not been any major client losses since April, some customers continue to keep Mahindra Satyam on their "watch list" to track its performance for about six months,” said Atul Kunwar, head of operations in Europe, Asia Pacific, the Middle East, Africa and India.

Mahindra Satyam was earlier known as Satyam Computer Services. Satyam was acquired by India's Tech Mahindra in an auction in April after the firm was hit by India's biggest corporate fraud that was revealed in January.

"Definitely, there is a sense of optimism that has started to come back but it isn't something that's windfall kind of a situation right now," Kunwar said.

Kunwar said Mahindra Satyam was seeing good business momentum in the geographies excluding the United States, with the company "actively participating" in some deals in Europe that could bring in revenues of about $50 million over four to five years.

"Europe is actually, from the point of view of looking at all these terrains, moving faster towards getting the momentum."

Non-US regions bring in about 50 per cent of Mahindra Satyam's revenue and the firm expects a sharp surge in India, Africa and the Middle East businesses in about two years, Kunwar said.

Scandal hits corporate role models IBM, McKinsey

It isn't often that big blue gets a black eye. But on Friday IBM, the leading U.S. technology firm known for its conservative management, found itself entangled in the largest ever hedge fund insider-trading scheme involving Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam.

Robert Moffat, senior vice president and head of IBM's systems and technology group was named as a defendant. Executives at leading chipmaker Intel Corp and management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. were also implicated.

Bob Djurdjevic, an Annex Research analyst who has been covering IBM for over 30 years and is himself a former employee, said the news came as a shock.

"If there's any company that's always been a model of pristine behavior, being above it all, it was IBM," he said.

"I don't think it will have an effect on IBM's business because it has deep talent. However, it is a black eye to IBM's reputation."

The charges, stemming from wiretaps, included accusations that Moffat passed on to hedge fund New Castle Group insider information on Advanced Micro Devices Inc, obtained through IBM's business negotiations with the company.

He is also accused of passing on information on IBM itself ahead of the company's quarterly results, as well as those of Sun Microsystems while IBM was looking at its books for a possible acquisition. The FBI said Moffat was one of the IBM executives conducting due diligence on Sun.

Rajaratnam is also accused of conspiring with Rajiv Goel, director of strategic investment at Intel's investment arm, and Anil Kumar, a director of powerful management consulting firm McKinsey & Co.

Daniel Lazaroff, business law professor at Loyola Law School, said the case showed how widespread insider trading was, and that often the risk and penalty of getting caught was often not enough to deter them.

"The lesson for these companies is to try to internally monitor what is going on and make it clear that separate and apart from federal or state laws they are going to deal very harshly with these people from an employment standpoint," he said. "And they should have compliance systems in place."

Coincidentally, IBM sells software to aid companies' compliance policies and prevent insider fraud as part of its portfolio of technology services, software and servers.

The case adds to IBM's recent headaches. The U.S. Justice Department said last week that it was investigating allegations that IBM abused its dominance in the mainframe servers market to squeeze rivals.

The news also comes a day after IBM announced quarterly results that beat expectations but disappointed some investors who were not happy with some of the numbers, including a drop in service contract signings, an indication of future sales.

IBM declined to comment. McKinsey said it was "distressed" to learn that Kumar had been arrested, and was looking into the matter. Intel said it was not aware of the case until Friday and had not been contacted by authorities.

Mac, iPhone push Apple’s profit 47% higher

Apple, in its recent history, has overcome nearly every obstacle thrown its way. Now
it has dealt with another: the burden of high expectations.

Apple managed to surprise optimistic investors, posting a 47 per cent increase in profit in the fourth quarter and handily beating investors’ estimates. Renewed sales of Macintosh laptops and the continued popularity of the iPhone around the world helped to lift Apple’s bottom line.

‘‘It’s a pretty impressive quarter, given that consumers are still trying to figure out whether they want to spend again,’’ said Gene Munster, a securities analyst at Piper Jaffray.

Shares of Apple have already nearly doubled this year, and investors pushed up the stock throughout what appeared to be a profitable summer. Wall Street has been impressed by rebounding momentum in the Mac business and Apple’s leadership in the battle for smartphones — the versatile phones that make calls and run thousands of applications.

Moreover, the return of Steven P Jobs, the chief executive, to the public spotlight at an Apple event in September to introduce new iPods has calmed fears about management turbulence at the company.

Apple, based in Cupertino, California, posted particularly strong gains in the computer segment while many of its rivals were still struggling to recover from the recession’s effect on consumer spending. Apple said it sold 3.05 million Macs in the quarter, up about 17 per cent from the 2.6 million it sold in the same quarter last year. Global PC sales rose 2.3 per cent in the third quarter of the year, according to the market tracking firm IDC.

Mac sales were also helped by renewed back-to-school buying in the United States and the June introduction of Snow Leopard, the latest version of its Mac operating system. Macintosh sales have grown faster than the rest of the PC market in 19 of the past 20 quarters.

Apple continued to mine gold from the summer introduction of a new smartphone, the iPhone 3GS. Apple sold 7.4 million phones in the quarter, up from 6.9 million units sold in the same quarter a year earlier and ahead of Wall Street’s expectation of about seven million iPhones.

But there were indications that the company could have done even better. Timothy D Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, indicated that demand for the 3GS had exceeded expectations and that it had taken the company until early October to get supply and demand balanced in some countries.

Apple executives added that they planned to introduce the iPhone on October 30 in China through a partnership with China Unicom, one of the country’s largest mobile carriers. ‘‘This is the largest market in the world in terms of total phones, and it’s very important we get started to make it as large as possible in smartphones,’’ Cook said.

Not even the iPod, which has been slowly fading as a stand-alone business, seriously hurt the quarter for Apple. The company sold 10.2 million iPods during the quarter, slightly behind the pace of 10.4 million that Wall Street had projected for the company.

But Apple took pains to point out that sales of the iPod Touch, which can run applications as the iPhone does, had doubled over the same period last year.

For the quarter that ended September 26, Apple said its net income had risen to $1.67 billion, or $1.82 a share. That was up from $1.14 billion, or $1.26 a share, in the quarter a year ago. Revenue rose to $9.87 billion, from $7.9 billion last year.

That easily beat the already optimistic expectations of analysts, who had projected that Apple would announce revenue of $9.2 billion and net income of $1.42 a share, according to a survey conducted by Thomson Reuters.

Looking ahead, Apple projected earnings for the December quarter of about $1.70 a share and gross margins that fell short of analysts’ predictions. Apple said that new products would have lower margins than their predecessors. Analysts are expecting earnings closer to $1.91 a share, saying that Apple is notoriously conservative in estimating profits.

Asked about iPhone competitors like Motorola, Research In Motion and Palm, Apple executives took the opportunity to brag.

‘‘We feel very good suiting up and competing against anyone,’’ Cook said. ‘‘People are really just trying to catch up with the first iPhone that was announced two years ago, and we have long since moved beyond that.’’

Indian cos hiring activity picks up 4.1 % in Sept

India Inc's hiring activity picked up 4.1 per cent in September with IT, BPO and real estate sectors turning bullish after a long time, a report by job portal naurkri.Com has said.

The naukri.Com's monthly 'JobSpeak index' increased to 729 in September from 701 in August this year.

"The secular trend is positive across sectors. Had it not been for an early festival season we may have seen further improvement in the index.

"The good news is that the IT and BPO sectors which are big employers especially at entry and junior levels seem to be in positive territory after a long time," Info Edge (owner of naukri.Com) COO and Director Hitesh Oberoi said.

Moreover, on the three-month moving average, the index inched up to 719 in September from 715 in August.

Last month, companies' hiring activity saw a positive trend with 14 out of 41 sectors covered showing a double digit rise in hiring activities.

The IT-enabled services (ITeS) and BPO, real estate and retail sectors saw a significant push in September as compared to August, the report stated.

The ITeS/BPO sector, saw an increase of 18.3 per cent in hiring activity in September, while real estate and retail saw a rise of 36.8 per cent and 12.2 per cent, respectively.

Google employees get surprise bonus

Employees of Google, the world’s most popular search engine, got more than just sweets and wishes this Diwali. Google announced a surprise bonus for its employees worldwide, which comes in the backdrop of its better than expected results for the third quarter, announced last week.

A mail to this effect was sent to employees of Google on Monday and a company official confirmed the development. "The bonus we rewarded our employees is a part of the annual bonus that nearly 20,000 employees worldwide were given. Job-holders across all levels were handed out a bonus," said Manoj Varghese, head-human resources, APAC region, Google.

Further details on why employees were rewarded or what the quantum was across various levels were not available. The bonus that Googlers get is like the company’s famous canteen in Googleplex - a much-discussed topic among Google followers.

Google has over thousand employees in India, its second largest employee base after US. An employees said Google’s India employees, spread across its centres in Gurgaon, Bangalore and Hyderabad and different levels received the mail about the bonus payment.

"We were told that we are getting a surprise bonus of Rs 18,000 and it’s to thank employees for their contribution to the company. Also, that its like a gift for working hard during the recession and showing spectacular results," said an employee of the company, who did not wish to be named.

The mail comes a few days after Google announced results for the third quarter, where it beat street expectations. For the quarter ended September 2009, Google’s revenue was up 7% at $5.94 billion and its net profit rose 27% to $1.64 billion.

During the earnings call last week, Google CEO Eric Schmidt had said, "While there’s obviously a lot of uncertainty about the pace of the economic recovery, we feel the worst of the recession is behind us and now we feel confident about investing heavily in our future."

And the unexpected bonuses worldwide only points to Google’s confidence about the business environment. Its better sales numbers is a key indicator of advertising spend as an increase in ad spend could in turn give signals about how the economy is shaping up.

It could also work as a motivation tool for employees, as Google faces increasing competition in the search space and has also forayed into the product space with its Google phone.

"Google is entering a phase where it’s going to face increasing competition from its main rivals- Microsoft and Apple. This surprise bonus could be a way of motivating employees to prepare themselves for the competition which is going to be stiffer going ahead," said Gartner India’s principal research analyst Diptarup Chakraborti.

Staff confidence in Indian firms up in Q3

Indian employees maintained high level of confidence in the future of their companies in the third quarter of this year compared with their global peers, a study says.
As per the study by global human resource solutions provider Kenexa, except India, China and Brazil, employees from nine other countries reported a decline in employee confidence in the third quarter compared with the previous quarter.

“Globally there was about one point decline in the third quarter 2009 (in the employee confidence index), compared to five point improvement in the second quarter. China and India sustained and built very slightly on the improvements seen in the second quarter of 2009, while Japan reversed a second quarter downward trend,” Kenexa Research Institute research consultant Anne Herman said.

Employee confidence, a quarterly measure of the degree of confidence employees have in their employers’ marketplace competitiveness and their own careers, dropped to 97.9 at the end of September from 98.9 in June this year.

The country-wise employee confidence index score for India was 100.2 in September quarter, rising marginally from 99.6 in June this year, the report showed. “Only three countries, China, India and Brazil, are at or above the employee confidence levels first measured in Q2 of 2008,” the report stated.

In September, Brazil (105.3), China (102.8) and India had highest levels of employee confidence, while Germany (96.7), Japan (95.6) and Spain (93.3) had lowest. The largest declines in 2009 Q3 employee confidence levels compared with the second quarter were registered in France followed by Spain and Germany.

Interestingly, the US employee confidence index score dropped 1.2 per cent since June this year to 97.7. “While Q2 of 2009 showed a global economy rebounding strongly, the third quarter employee confidence scores indicate that recovery is not going to be a straight line of positively improving results,” the survey said.