The week saw software giant TCS replacing Tata Steel as India’s Most Admired Company for 2013 by the Indian edition of the Fortune magazine. Professional CEOs too are on the rise, with three of the top 10 in the 2013 edition of ‘India Inc's Most Powerful CEOs’ are professionals. Twenty of the top 50 and 39 in the top 100 also belong to this tribe.

Two top executives were hired this week. While AirAsia (India) appointed Amisha Sethi as its chief commercial officer, Rajeev Dubey, president and member of the group executive board of Mahindra & Mahindra, was elected as the new president of National HRD Network (NHRDN), the apex body of HRD professionals in the country, for 2013-15. Meanwhile, Infosys continues to see churn at its top management level. Infosys’ global sales head Basab Pradhan resigned three days before the software major announced its results for the April-June quarter, while board member V. Balakrishnan is likely to return to the finance function. The company may see a major reorganization soon.

The week also saw lay-offs due to slowing business. Swiss lender UBS AG has begun firing some employees of its commercial banking division, a little over two weeks after it surrendered its commercial banking licence to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Pearson group-owned technology-aided education services company PurpleLeap in the past fortnight sacked more than 250 staff, or half of its workforce, to cut costs amid slowing business.

Industrial relations too seem to be at a flashpoint. While the apex court instructed the Tatas to return the Singur land to farmers, Bajaj Auto Limited was slapped with a show-cause notice over the strike at Chakan plant. Maharashtra Labour Minister Hassan Mushrif is likely to call the Bajaj Auto management next week for a meeting to resolve the workers' strike. Meanwhile, in order to stem the tensions at Neyveli, the Tamil Nadu government has decided to buy the Centre’s 5 per cent stake in Neyveli Lignite Corporation after the Securities & Exchange Board of India (sebi) cleared the decks for the deal.

In international news, Tata’s JLR factories in UK face strike threat in the UK, but the company said they had contingency plans ready. An international study has found that younger female employees are more likely to perceive themselves as equal to their male colleagues at workplace. Also, India plans to sign MoU with Malaysia on labour welfare. Closer home, Maruti Suzuki has asked as many as 450 contract workers to go on “long leave”, or leave without pay, as it looks to cut production and clear inventory that has piled up at its dealerships.

The sluggish economy is dampening hiring activities across the country, said job portal Naukri.com. More than 200 i-bankers employed in domestic and foreign investment banks have been forced to quit or asked to leave since June last year because of a decline in the number of deals and falling stock markets. Other developments on the job front, companies hire sleuths to check CVs for fake details; the government plans to fix tenures for PSU chiefs; the talent retention strategies for companies like Maruti, Essar & RPG; and new executive MBA programmes.