News: Barclays, ABN to move 10,000 jobs to India

(PTI 23/04/2007) London/New Delhi - British banking giant Barclays will add thousands of new employees to its India headcount following the takeover of its Dutch rival ABN Amro in a cash-and-stock deal valued at over $90 billion. The deal, the biggest-ever M&A in the financial services space, would create the largest institutional asset manager and the world's eighth largest wealth manager, but will result in over 12,000 job cuts at the two banks' operations across the world. India, however, will be a net gainer in terms of jobs as well as expanded operations of the two banks. While the number of new jobs have not been disclosed, sources close to the development pegged the figure at anywhere between 8,000 and 10,000. "Part of the expected staff reduction will be through establishing shared services and off-shoring those positions to low-cost locations such as India where new staff will be recruited at ABN Amor's existing ACES operations," ABN AMRO and Barclays said in a joint statement. The duo said they have identified the possibility of rationalising the number of staff of the combined group through a combination of natural attrition, off-shoring and outsourcing as well as redundancies.