 "RBS deal cancellation a setback for Infosys")
Vishal Sikka’s plans to stabilise business and focus on higher growth at Infosys faced a setback early this month after a key client Royal Bank of Scotland scrapped a project to set up a separate bank in the United Kingdom, for which Infosys was a key technology partner.
It will move to other projects nearly 3,000 people working on a project to build the technology applications for Williams and Glyn (W&G), a new standalone bank that RBS planned to set up separately in the UK.
Infosys may lose as much as $50 million in the current year due to the project cancellation, which comes at a time when Sikka was forced to cut annual forecast over uncertainty in client spending.
Since then, Sikka has revamped his top leadership to look at faster ramp up of clients and getting large deals to meet his target of generating $20 billion revenue by 2020. He expanded the role of former SAP executive Ritika Suri, heading the $500-million innovation fund, to lead the team for large deals. Veteran Deepak Padaki, chief risk officer and head of strategy, would lead the team for mergers and acquisitions. Sudhir Jha has been roped in from Google to help in product management and marketing for Mana — the artificial intelligence platform.
In 2013, Infosys had won a project to build the applications for Williams and Glyn (W&G), a new standalone bank that RBS planned to set up separately in the UK. On August 5, RBS said it had aborted the plan citing difficulties in integrating W&G computer systems to mirror that of RBS. The project was jointly won by IBM and Infosys which was valued at Euro 300 million.
"The Royal Bank of Scotland announced last week that it will no longer pursue its plan to separate and list a new UK standalone bank, Williams & Glyn (W&G), and instead will pursue other options for the divestment of this business," Infosys said in a statement "Infosys has been a W&G program technology partner for Consulting, Application Delivery and Testing services, and subsequent to this decision, will carry out an orderly ramp-down of about 3,000 persons, primarily in India, over the next few months."
RBS is a key relationship for Infosys and the company looks forward to further strengthening our strategic partnership and working with them across other strategic and transformation programs.