BackWipro may shed staff in Finland
Wipro may shed staff in Finland
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Bangalore: India’s third largest technology firm, Wipro Ltd, is restructuring its telecom research and development operations in Finland that may affect about one-third of its staff there.
The company will hold talks with employee representatives in Finland on 28 January on the restructuring of four of its eight units that employ about 300 people in the Scandinavian nation.
Pramod Idiculla, general manager, strategy, at Wipro Technologies, said the company decided to rejig its Finnish units as clients in the region were moving some of their research work to emerging nations.
The move is specific to Finland and “Europe continues to be a significant growth market for Wipro and we would be continuously looking to invest and grow our presence in this market", he said in an email.
Europe contributed 26.3% to Wipro’s IT services revenue of Rs5,165 crore in the third quarter.
“After carefully considering all possible options, the company has decided to enter into a negotiation process with the employees, given the challenging industry situation in telecom R&D," Wipro said in a statement on Thursday.
The Indian firm opened its first unit in Finland in 2002. Four years later, Wipro acquired Finnish telecom service provider, Saraware Oy, for €25 million (Rs162 crore), through which it added 200 specialists in radio networks and secure mobile platforms.
The acquisition was to help Wipro, which counts Finnish phone maker Nokia Oyj as a customer, add centres closer to its clients in Europe and take up complex and end-to-end projects and strengthen its presence in the Scandinavian market.
Elsewhere in Europe, Wipro is in talks with some firms to sell the French unit of NewLogic Technologies GmbH— an Austrian firm it bought in 2005 for $56 million.
Last year, Wipro had planned to shutter the unit that employs 60 people, but drew political criticism in France because it had availed of a research credit scheme that gave it tax benefits of around €5 million.
Wipro’s stock closed lower by 2.24%, or Rs16.25, at Rs709.15 on Thursday on the Bombay Stock Exchange, keeping pace with a 2.42%, or 423.35 points, drop in the benchmark Sensex to 17,051.14.
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