Fidelity Investments, the world’s largest mutual fund manager, is reported to be touting for sale a 2,000 strong technology services unit which it runs out of Bangalore and Chennai, India.
As well as taking on all of the existing business operations, the acquirer can expect a multi-year outsourcing contract from Fidelity, early reports are suggesting.
Fidelity is not the first financial services company to look to asset disposals as one way of reducing the operating cost footprint, with US bank Citigroup and UK insurer Aviva both recently having off-loaded certain of their captive outsource units.
The unit is part of Fidelity Research and Management Co India, which provides back office support to Fidelity in the US. According to sources cited in India’s Economic Times, potential bidders are likely to include Wipro, Satyam, Accenture, IBM and Infosys.
In a related announcement, Infosys Technologies Ltd has revealed it has won a five year, multi-million dollar global sourcing deal with AstraZeneca.
As part of that deal, a number of AstraZeneca employees in Sweden and the UK will work for Infosys on the supply of applications maintenance services for the pharmaceutical giant’s manufacturing, supply chain, finance and human resources programmes.
