Weekly roundup (Sep 23-28): News you cannot miss
Perhaps the biggest news headline this week was about the IIT Madras alumnus and owner of the financial service company Fairfax Holdings, Prem Watsa, announcing his intent to buy the sick mobile device manufacturer, BlackBerry Inc. Watsa like Warren Buffet is known to risk his money in extremely risky and unconventional businesses. It is for the coming times to tell how Watsa’s investment will turn out.
This was a week where a number of research studies were release stating the tough job market in India. Junior and entry level talent will find it more difficult to find jobs where companies are looking to hire mid-level and experienced talent who could take on a job from Day 1. At the same time, India features among the countries in the world with the highest levels of attrition. Poaching in the IT sector seems to be rampant and the troubled IT-giant Infosys continues to face attrition and poaching threats.
Diversity emerged as a major theme for this week with the announcement of an all-female BPO unit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia by Tata. Also, there is speculation that the State Bank of India may get its first ever woman chairman, Arundhati Bhattacharya. There were rumours that Bhattacharya is the top contender for this position.
With the festival season round the corner, companies announced their festival bonus intent, and the trend is that most companies will keep up their festival bonuses comparable to last year. The drop in the real-estate market is also kicking off a new trend, consolidation of office spaces. Several companies in the past few months have moved offices and leased bigger office spaces to consolidate office operations.