Desi Butcher Vikram Pandit, Citigroup CEO, is throwing 9,000 employees on the streets on top of the 4,200 jobs the embattled bank has already cut recently.

As usual, the new round of job cuts are also attributed to expense management.

And did we tell you that Vikram Pandit, like the proverbial pig at the trough, took $26.7 million in stock (1.094 million shares) on January 22, 2008, according to the bank’s regulatory filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Citigroup also announced Friday a writedown of $202 million in the value of Continue Reading…

The Desi Butcher Vikram Pandit-led financial mess Citigroup reported a hefty loss of $5.1 billion on revenues of $13.2 billion in its first quarter ended March 31 and will throw another 9,000 employees on the streets.

On a conference call with analysts, Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit acknowledged:

To start with, we’re not happy with our financial results this quarter although they’re not completely unexpected given the assets we hold.

Who would be happy with these crappy results? Reaching a new acme of greed, grasping Wall Street pigs in top positions have taken home hundreds of millions of dollars and ultimately left investors and employees holding the bag when the inevitable crash came.

Results include $6.0 billion in pre-tax write-downs and credit costs on sub-prime related direct exposures, write-downs of $3.1 billion on funded and unfunded highly leveraged finance commitments, a downward credit value adjustment of $1.5 billion related to exposure to monoline insurers, write-downs of $1.5 billion on auction rate securities inventory, and a $3.1 billion increase in credit costs in global consumer.

Revenues fell 48% year-over-year because of Continue Reading…

Data warehouse software firm Kalido is setting up a competency center in the South Indian city of Bangalore to take up product development, verification and services.

The Bangalore facility will complement existing operations in Burlington, Massachusetts and London. 

The Bangalore center, which will also support evolving product requirements and professional services needs of both regional and global clients, will be led by Ashish Vikram.

Indian conglomerate Tata has acquired Ford’s ailing brands Jaguar and Land Rover for $2.3 billion.

For years, Jaguar has been a millstone round Ford’s neck.

We find it hard to accept that this is a smart business move from the Tata Group.

For several years, Lexus, BMW and Mercedes have made mincemeat of Jaguar.

Jaguar has not had many takers for years and it seems doubtful that rich Americans and Britons will flock to buy a luxury car owned by a third world company.

Would wealthy Indians buy a luxury car made in Bangladesh?

The transfer of ownership to Tata Motors is expected to happen by the end of the second quarter of 2008.

Founded in 1922, Jaguar has been amongst the worst premium brands for luxury saloons and sports cars.

Land rover’s first design appeared in 1948.

Jaguar and Land Rover have been under Ford’s ownership since 1989 and 2000 respectively and together have about 16,000 employees.

As part of the deal, Ford promised to continue to supply Jaguar and Land Rover for differing periods with powertrains, stampings and other components.

DVD and CD manufacturer and distributor Thomson’s Technicolor Division plans to launch a DVD Compression & Authoring Operation in the South Indian city of Bangalore.

Set to open in May 2008, the new DVD Compression & Authoring  facility will be managed by Sumit Malik.

The new DVD Compression & Authoring facility will focus on the domestic Indian market and also function as an off-shoring location to boost Techinicolor’s capacities for worldwide DVD services.

The upcoming DVD Compression & Authoring  facility will be co-located in Thomson’s Paprikaas Animation and Game Design facility in Bangalore.

The Compression & Authoring operation will be based on Thomson’s research and development efforts for high-definition Blu-ray Disc and standard-definition DVDs.

What an irony!

When Indian IT companies like Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro are stepping up their investments in the U.S., VMware is going the other way.

Virtualization software house VMware joined the hordes of U.S. corporations that are screwing American workers with its just-announced plans to boost research and development operations in India through an investment of $100 million.

VMware’s Easter gift to struggling American workers include:

* Investing U.S. $100 million in India by 2010
* A new, state-of-the-art 82,000 square foot development center in Bangalore
* Doubling VMware’s India-based engineering organization to more than 1,000 people in the next two years

VMware already has a significant presence across India with offices in Bangalore, Pune, Chennai, Delhi, and Mumbai. The company entered India Continue Reading…

Karan Bhatia has been named a GE Officer, a prestigious position in the diversified multinational corporation.

Worldwide, GE has just 197 GE Officers, who lead large revenue generating businesses or occupy critical functional roles.

The 39-year-old Bhatia was named GE’s new VP and senior counsel, international government relations and policy recently.

Before joining GE, Bhatia was the Deputy U.S. Trade Representative at the Office of the United States Trade Department in Washington D.C.

Previously, Bhatia held several key positions in Washington Continue Reading…

With the U.S. economy in complete meltdown, the party is over for Indian outsourcing firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, Infosys, Polaris, Satyam et al.

Some Indian software firms like TCS have already reported delays in orders from their top clients.

U.S. financial services firms that have taken a severe beating and borne the brunt of the recent carnage on Wall Street are among the major clients for several Indian software houses.

The big question now is when will Indian firms - that staffed up in the go-go days of hyper growth - start laying off employees, Continue Reading…

ICICI Bank has lost $263 million because of its exposure to credit derivatives and fixed income investments.

ICICI executives acknowledged that the bank and its overseas banking subsidiaries have an aggregate exposure of $2.2 billion in credit derivatives.

The bank claims it ” has no material direct or indirect exposure to US sub-prime credit”.

IBM has opened its first Global Delivery center in Noida, Uttar Pradesh on the outskirts of Delhi.

IBM India’s global delivery centers offer a range of services capabilities including Consulting and Systems Integration, Infrastructure, Applications and Business Process transformation and management.

IBM has six Global Delivery locations in India: Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Pune, Chennai and National Capital Region (Noida and Gurgaon).

IBM plans to open a second center in Continue Reading…

Iceland’s Glitnir Bank is coming to India.

Glitnir plans to file an application with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to open a representative office in India.

The bank has similar offices in China, US and Canada to support its niche strategy within geothermal energy, seafood and offshore service vessels.

Glitnir has also formed a joint venture with LNJ Bhilwara Group to develop geothermal power plants in India and Nepal.

The JV, a 60-40 partnership with Glitnir holding 40%, will focus on building power plants in India and Nepal using sustainable energy like geothermal energy.

Glitnir intends to bring in strategic investors to raise capital during different phases of development of the geothermal plants.

Glitnir Bank CEO Lárus Welding said:

Glitnir’s strategy is to have a local presence in all the major emerging markets with potential in the Glitnir industry focus. Following the establishment of our presence in China, India is the next logical destination.

Bala Kamallakharan, Executive Director of Strategic Growth in Glitnir, is spearheading the bank’s efforts in India.

Can two Internet failures - Microsoft and Yahoo - become successful when they come together?

We doubt it.

After failing badly in its efforts to take on the Google juggernaut, Microsoft has made a desperate $44.6 billion offer to buy struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo.

We think Microsoft’s proposal is heck of a bad idea. What does Yahoo really bring to Microsoft? Not much, when you stop to think of it.

Following far too many missteps, Yahoo is floundering and its CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang has shown no signs so far that he can do a Steve Jobs on the company.

Google has overtaken Yahoo and Microsoft in both search and in monetizing the page views from search through key word advertising on Google and its affiliates (via the AdSense program).

In our view, the main issue is that the quality of search results on both Yahoo and Microsoft is inferior to what Google offers. That has led most people to stick with Google.

Microsoft argues that the proposed acquisition of Yahoo will give consumers, advertisers and publishers a credible alternative to Google. We remain skeptical of that claim. Perhaps, Microsoft should invest its resources on the next frontier - the mobile arena.

Despite investing billions of dollars, Microsoft’s MSN/Live search engine struggles Continue Reading…