As Lehman Brothers Holdings, a U.S based investment banking firm has decided to file for bankruptcy protection in the US., India's third largest IT company Wipro and Copal Partners, a knowledge process outsourcing firm have expressed interest to acquire its back office business in India, reported Business Standard. Lehman currently owes over $600 billion to lenders.
In this regard, the bank's offshore development center, which houses over 100 employees at Wipro is expected to close down. Sources said that Mumbai office also is expected to be shut down shortly.
The company is expected to close its captive unit in Powai, a Mumbai suburb by the end of this month. Lehman has told to about 1,200 employees of the unit who are working on equity research and analytics support for the mergers and acquisition to quit by the end of this month and they will be paid only for this month as a severance package. However when contacted, the company's Mumbai based officials denied to comment on the issue.
According to investment banking Wipro and Copal have been looking at buying opportunities in this space for some time. Moreover, Copal already has clients in industries such as investment banking, equity research, credit research, and strategy consultancy.
Lehman set up BPO operations in India in 2005 and according to the fact sheet of the firm, the centre saw the number of employees going up by eight times by the middle of this year and had declared its plans to grow the operations. In fact, it was recruiting couple of months before also.
Employees in the captive BPO may find it hard to get a new job as IT and ITeS companies are now looking to cut their workforce to beat the global economy slowdown.
Source: Silicon India