MONDAY

One wrong employee choice costs firms over Rs 20 lakh: Survey
India is among the top four countries worldwide when it comes to companies making a wrong choice in hiring an employee, according to a survey. PTI reported that a single case of a bad hire can cost a company more than Rs 20 lakh. The chances of companies taking a bad hiring decision is highest in Russia, followed by Brazil, China and India at the top-four positions, while the US is at the fifth, according to PTI.
As per the study conducted by global human resource consultancy CareerBuilder, 88 per cent companies in Russia said they were affected by bad hiring last year, followed by 87 per cent in Brazil and China and 84 per cent in India.

Mukesh Ambani forgoes Rs 24-crore from RIL salary
Reliance Industries’ billionaire chief Mukesh Ambani has kept his annual salary capped at Rs 15 crore for the fifth year in a row, while foregoing nearly Rs 24 crore from the remuneration approved for him by shareholders, a PTI report said.

‘Only 2% of India’s youth have vocational training’
Just 2 per cent of India’s youth and only about 7 per cent of the whole working age population have received vocational training, a recently survey by National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) in 2009-10 revealed, according to a Times of India report. The survey covered 4.6 lakh people.

Cognizant reshuffles its senior management team
Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., the US company that has most of its employees in India, has made several changes to its senior management team as it seeks to strengthen its focus on newer business opportunities, including social, mobile and cloud computing, and give more responsibilities to its young leaders, a report by Mint said.

New H-1B visa rules to hit Cognizant, TCS most
While large IT services companies are scrambling to minimise the impact of proposed overhaul of the immigration system in the world’s largest economy analysts expect Cognizant and Tata Consultancy Services to be the most affected based on factors such as their US revenue contribution and proportion of visa holders in their US workforce, an Economic Times report said.

TUESDAY

Ravi Gururaj is chairman of Nasscom’s revamped product council
The National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) lobby group has named serial entrepreneur Ravi Gururaj as the new chairman of its revamped product council that was previously headed by Sharad Sharma, who recently formed a separate forum with other software product companies called the Indian Software Product Industry Round Table, or iSpirt.

Stephen Pratt, Ashok Vemuri highest paid Infosys executives
Stephen R. Pratt and Ashok Vemuri were the two highest paid executives at India’s second largest software exporter Infosys Ltd for the 2012-13 fiscal, according to a regulatory filing, the Mint reported.

Students flock to Mandarin courses at B-schools
Mandarin has emerged as a popular course at some of the IIMs, the Economic Times reported. One of them, IIM Bangalore (IIM-B), says Indian students cannot afford to be left behind as the two countries compete in every sphere of economic activity.

BoA shifts some projects from India back to the US
Bank of America Corp., the second largest US lender by assets, has started to shift a small part of the projects it had awarded to India’s software companies to local firms or its own centres to ward off political backlash against jobs being outsourced to India, the Mint reported.

Gurcharan Das, Renuka Ramnath in new AI board?
The civil aviation ministry has recommended the names of retired Air Marshal K.K. Nohwar (former vice-chief of the Indian Air Force); private equity fund manager Renuka Ramnath; writer and former P&G India chief Gurcharan Das; founder and former director of the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, Prem Vrat; and professor Ravindra H. Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, as independent directors of Air India Ltd, according to a report in Mint.

WEDNESDAY

CFOs of infra majors resign as projects lag in schedule

Finance chiefs of some of India's biggest infrastructure companies have either resigned or been eased out to other roles in the last year as projects executed by these firms fall behind schedule and they fail to meet optimistic targets set earlier, according to a report in Economic Times.

UK launches ‘super-priority’ visas for Indians
Britain has launched a new “super priority” same-day visa service for urgent travellers from India, the first-of-its-kind service to be launched by the UK anywhere in the world, PTI reported. The super priority visa service was announced by British Prime Minister David Cameron during his visit to the country in February this year. The service is open for appointment bookings in India from today.

Aviva’s move to shift jobs to Pune draws ire from UK unions
UK life insurer, Aviva, is outsourcing 600 jobs to Pune in Maharashtra to reduce costs drawing criticism from Britain's largest trade union Unite, according to a report in Economic Times. Back-office jobs from York, Norwich and Sheffield will be relocated to Pune to achieve significant cost savings and bring about operational efficiency.

Online retailers Flipkart, Jabong hand out pink slips
Online retailers are handing out pink slips in large numbers as they shift attention to controlling costs from acquiring customers, several industry executives told Economic Times. Among the companies sacking staff are Flipkart and Jabong, which are among the biggest in the business, illustrating the growing pain in India's e-commerce sector, the report said.

Google CEO says vocal cords affected by ‘very rare’ condition
Google Inc Chief Executive Larry Page provided the first public details of the voice ailment that sidelined him from speaking engagements last summer, saying that he has limited movement in his left and right vocal cords, Reuters reported.

THURSDAY

How GE, Cisco, Dell & HCL help women 'restart' careers
Four companies are taking that thought and moulding an internal women's grouping that is a win-win. Each of these four groupings are helping women employees or entrepreneurs professionally and personally, and is giving companies a better idea of what women want, reports ET.
GE has formed an affinity group called the Women’s Network where mentoring was a focus area. In Cisco, the members of the company’s women group among other things are assigned a mentor—usually someone senior and from another domain—who helps them work on their skill sets so that they can move up the ladder. The Dell Women's Entrepreneur Network (DWEN) tries to level the playing field for women entrepreneurs.

India's economic confidence drops; ranks 6th globally: Survey
India's economic confidence dropped last month due to plethora of corruption allegations against the Union government ministers and the country is now the sixth most economically confident country in the world after Saudi Arabia, Sweden, China, Canada and Germany, a PTI report said. According to a survey by global research firm Ipsos, India's economic confidence dropped by 2 points to 63 per cent in April 2013 compared to March 2013.

Infosys CEO Shibulal not among firm's top 10 paid executives
A key document (Form 20-F) filed by Infosys with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reveals that the CEO of India's second biggest IT firm earns substantially less than some of his subordinates, an NDTV report said. Ten executives earned more than what Chief Executive Officer S.D. Shibulal took home as base salary (excluding other benefits such as incentive and bonus) in the last fiscal.

HSBC may cut up to 14,000 more jobs
HSBC plans to cut annual costs by up to another $3 billion and may axe a further 14,000 jobs as Europe's biggest bank strives to drive profits in the face of sluggish growth outside Asia, an Economic Times report said.

Air Asia India appoints Singapore-based Mittu Chandilya as CEO
The board of Air Asia India appointed Singapore based Mittu Chandilya to head the operations of the company in India, an Economic Times report said. Mittu Chandilya, 32, will be amongst the youngest CEO's to operate an airline in the country. Chandilya, educated at INSEAD in France, was formerly the head of services practices for Asia Pacific at Egon Zehnder International, an advisory firm with more than 420 consultants spread across 40 countries.

FRIDAY

Ex-chief of Citi Vikram Pandit to lead JM Financial’s NBFC
Vikram Pandit, the former chief executive of Citigroup who was ousted after losing a power struggle with the bank's chairman last year, will lead a proposed bank that his long-time friend and ace rainmaker Nimesh Kampani of JM Financial plans to set up, an Economic Times report said. Global funds raised and managed by Pandit will also invest up to $200 million in the JM Group's various businesses, the Mumbai-based company said in a statement. Pandit, 56, will acquire 50 per cent stake in JM's non-banking financial company (NBFC) and buy 3 per cent stake in the parent company, it said.

For a 30-minute meeting with Apple CEO, Indian techie bid $5,80,000
Rakesh Kumar, who is from Kaithal, Haryana, came to the US in 2006 on an H-1B visa, placed a bid of $580,000 (Rs 3.1 crore) in an online auction for a coffee with Apple CEO Tim Cook, according to a report in Hindustan Times. Kumar lost. The winning bid was $610,000. The auction was hosted by CharityBuzz.com, which offers meetings with celebs to raise money. Coffee with Cook was for RFK Center for Justice and Human rights. The winning bidder and his/her partner would get to spend 30 minutes to an hour with Cook.

Tata Steel writedown sparks jobs fears
India's Tata Steel has wiped £1bn from the value of its European operations, sparking fresh fears over the future for steel manufacturing jobs in the UK.The group, which has UK operations at sites including Port Talbot, Rotherham and Scunthorpe, blamed the tough economy in Europe where steel demand has slumped by about a third since the start of the financial crisis. Unions said the huge writedown will worry its 18,500 staff in the UK who are still reeling from 900 job cuts last year.

Ex-Groupon CEO moving to San Francisco to start new firm
Former Groupon Inc. Chief Executive Andrew Mason is moving to San Francisco to start a company after recently recording an album of “motivational business music”, according to an update on his blog on Thursday. This was reported by Reuters.“If there's a silver lining to leaving Groupon, it's the opportunity to start something new,” Mason wrote. “I've accumulated a backlog of ideas over the last several years, my favorite of which I'll be turning into a new company this fall.”

How Citi, M&M, HCL keep their best performers happy
Last year, Citi India launched a breakthrough strategy for retaining high-performing women officers. Their strategy helps new mothers secure performance ratings during their six months' maternity leave, the report said. At Microsoft, the talent strategy is built around two key stakeholders — high potentials (4 per cent of the employees) and key talent (another 16 per cent of employees). The key talent component was introduced last year.