Intel, the world's largest chipmaker, and JP Morgan Chase, the global investment banker, said on Monday that they would outsource significant operations to India, an indication that more complex, high-value work is moving here.
Intel, based in Santa Clara, California, will invest more than US$1 billion in India over the next five years, of which US$800 million will go to expanding its research and development center in Bangalore, the company's chairman, Craig Barrett, said in a statement during a visit to New Delhi.
Intel's news followed the announcement in October that Cisco Systems would invest US$1.1 billion and triple its staff in India, from 1,400 to more than 4,000, in three years.
Intel's Bangalore center employs around 3,000 engineers who design and develop products. Barrett said on Monday that its latest investment "demonstrates Intel's long-term commitment."
Intel will invest the remaining approximately US$250 million as venture capital in technology companies.
JP Morgan Chase said it would add 4,500 employees in India by 2007, mainly by setting up operations in Bangalore to support its growing structured finance and derivatives businesses globally. The company will hire a mix of recent graduates and experienced workers and will double the size of its India operations. All 4,500 of JP Morgan Chase's current employees in India are based in Mumbai.
The bank made news two years ago when it became the first global investment bank to hire 35 equity researchers in India to support its operations on Wall Street.
"In our experience, we have found high-quality, low-cost staff in India and we want to continue investing in the country," said Michael Golden, a spokesman for the bank who is based in London."The investment is about meeting the growing needs of our business and not about shipping jobs from another location."
Wall Street firms and large global banks have been particularly aggressive in outsourcing work to India in recent months. UBS said it would open its first center in Hyderabad with 500 jobs early next year. Goldman Sachs has 750 people in its center in Bangalore but has a capacity for 1,500 employees.
"This is way beyond mere cost savings," Madhavi Mantha, a senior banking analyst at the financial consultancy Celent, said from Montreal. "Unless global banks are comfortable with the quality of work, they would not risk taking the work offshore."
JP Morgan Chase said the new employees will process complex derivatives settlements and structured finance transactions. The company will hire about 400 people a month. By 2007, it will have almost a third of its back-office and support jobs, about 3,000, in India.
Offshoring of work to India has steadily risen in the last few years, despite political discomfort in the US over the trend. Recently, high-end jobs in areas like chip design and complex product design have been added to the relatively low-end call center and paid-by-the-hour software coding work.
Though salaries in India are climbing rapidly for entry-level workers and top managers, Indian employees still earn less than a fifth of what their peers in the US do.
FIREPOWER: On top of the torpedoes, the military would procure Kestrel II anti-tank weapons systems to replace aging license-produced M72 LAW launchers Taiwan is to receive US-made Mark 48 torpedoes and training simulators over the next three years, following delays that hampered the navy’s operational readiness, the Ministry of National Defense’s latest budget proposal showed. The navy next year would acquire four training simulator systems for the torpedoes and take receipt of 14 torpedoes in 2027 and 10 torpedoes in 2028, the ministry said in its budget for the next fiscal year. The torpedoes would almost certainly be utilized in the navy’s two upgraded Chien Lung-class submarines and the indigenously developed Hai Kun, should the attack sub successfully reach operational status. US President Donald Trump
TPP RALLY: The clashes occurred near the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall on Saturday at a rally to mark the anniversary of a raid on former TPP chairman Ko Wen-je People who clashed with police at a Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) rally in Taipei on Saturday would be referred to prosecutors for investigation, said the Ministry of the Interior, which oversees the National Police Agency. Taipei police had collected evidence of obstruction of public officials and coercion by “disorderly” demonstrators, as well as contraventions of the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法), the ministry said in a statement on Sunday. It added that amid the “severe pushing and jostling” by some demonstrators, eight police officers were injured, including one who was sent to hospital after losing consciousness, allegedly due to heat stroke. The Taipei
NO LIVERPOOL TRIP: Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, who won a gold medal in the boxing at the Paris Olympics, was embroiled in controversy about her gender at that event Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting (林郁婷) will not attend this year’s World Boxing Championships in Liverpool, England, due to a lack of response regarding her sex tests from the organizer, World Boxing. The national boxing association on Monday said that it had submitted all required tests to World Boxing, but had not received a response as of Monday, the departure day for the championships. It said the decision for Lin to skip the championships was made to protect its athletes, ensuring they would not travel to the UK without a guarantee of participation. Lin, who won a gold medal in the women’s 57kg boxing
The US has revoked Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) authorization to freely ship essential gear to its main Chinese chipmaking base, potentially curtailing its production capabilities at that older-generation facility. American officials recently informed TSMC of their decision to end the Taiwanese chipmaker’s so-called validated end user (VEU) status for its Nanjing site. The action mirrors steps the US took to revoke VEU designations for China facilities owned by Samsung Electronics Co and SK Hynix Inc. The waivers are set to expire in about four months. “TSMC has received notification from the US Government that our VEU authorization for TSMC Nanjing