 "Infosys moves consultants in Europe to Lodestone to remove overlapping")
In September last year, the Bangalore-based company acquired Swiss management consulting firm, Lodestone Holding AG for about CHF 330 million (about $345 million or Rs 1,930 crore) in an all cash deal.
Participating in the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom conference held at San Francisco on Tuesday, S D Shibulal, CEO & MD of Infosys has said that the company is in the process of doing a realignment in order to remove the overlap of people. “We wanted to remove complete overlap of people across both the organisations because we are a consulting organization in Europe and they had a small consulting presence in the US,” he said.
“We will completely move the people into Lodestone in Europe, so that it becomes a complete consulting entity in Europe without any overlap from our side,” he added.
When Infosys signed the agreement to acquire Lodestone last year, the company had around 850 employees on its rolls including 750 SAP consultants serving over 200 clients across different industry segments. As compared with this, Infosys employs over 30,000 consultants as a part of its Consulting and System Integration Business which accounts for over 30 per cent of its overall revenues.
Shibulal said Infosys is looking at Lodestone as a vehicle to expand into Continental Europe. Besides, having a local company in Europe would also make it easier to hire better talents at better cost points, he added.
According to the company, Lodestone will focus primarily on five countries in Europe including the UK, Germany, France, Switzerland, Netherlands and Belgium.
Last quarter, Infosys had said that its joint to market initiative with Lodestone has helped it to bag one client in Europe.