Goldman Sachs to double strength

Goldman Sachs, the $20 billion global financial powerhouse, has announced plans to double its shared services manpower in India over the next one year. The company's centre here currently employs 500 professionals and is expected to reach 1,200 by mid 2006.

The financial conglomerate has already invested $30 million over the past year when it started this operation. It expects to invest another $5-6 million for expansion over the next year.

Announcing this expansion in Bangalore on Tuesday, Edward C Frost, chief administrative officer, Goldman Sachs said: "In 2004, we created a platform in Bangalore to support certain global operations, technology and finance functions. The development of this global centre was conceived to serve the needs of the entire firm around the world, significantly enhancing its long term global competitiveness."

Goldman Sachs expects to have 800 people by end of the current year and has built a new facility in Bangalore which will have a capacity to house 1,500 professionals.

The service groups in Bangalore include diverse functions and businesses covering research, knowledge management, applications development for front office and support systems, finance as well as operations which include treasury, equity and asset management operations.

In addition to this core work for its mainline business, the Bangalore centre also houses a technology command centre which is a 24/7 facility that operates along with the one located at Goldman Sachs's data centres in New Jersey, London and Tokyo. This command centre monitors the activities of the firm's networks and computer systems all over the world.

Besides this captive shared services centre, Goldman Sachs has outsourcing relations with IT vendors such as Infosys for software development which will continue to grow.