Markets and Industry Roundup - week ending March 13, 2009

Markets Roundup:

• Markets recovered over the week, after falling below 7,000 first time since 1997, driven by financial stocks
• Rally was triggered by Citi when they said that it was profitable in the first two months of '09 and would not need additional funds from government; JPM & Bank of America also stated they were profitable for the 2 months
• Reports also surfaced that US regulators are considering reinstating the uptick rule to slow the pace of short selling
• February retail sales declined 0.1%, better than the 0.5% decline that was expected
• Economic reports showed a slight rise in consumer sentiment and a narrowing in the US trade gap

Industry Roundup:

• Tech services sector up 6% last week as markets recovered
• Accenture ranked 49 among the most admired companies in twelfth annual rankings of FORTUNE World’s Most Admired Companies (WMACs) list
• Accenture has extended its contract to provide RSA UK with insurance BPO services (front-line customer service & back-office administration services)
• TCS announced the signing of a multi-year contract with Infineon Technologies, one of the leading semiconductor manufacturers, to operate and maintain solutions within the Infineon's Supply Chain Management (SCM) landscape
• TCS said that it will lay off less than 1% of its staff as it seeks to control costs amid the global economic slowdown
• Infosys said it has completed absorbing all 20,000 engineering students who graduated last year and to whom it had made job offers on campus
• HCL Technologies signed a $80 million end-to-end IT Services engagement covering the entire IT lifecycle from transformation to integration and operations management with National Insurance Company Ltd. (NIC) for a period of 7 years
• Wipro has won Rs 1,182 crore IT outsourcing contract from Employees State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) beating TCS and Infosys
• Wipro signed a three-year contract for the provision of IT Application Development and Support services with Friends Provident
• Syntel announced regular quarterly dividend of $0.06 per share
• EXL announced 2008 results – Revenue up 20% to $181.7 million, EPS of $0.38 per share from $0.60 last year due to $9.3million of forex losses, guided revenue to be between $170 million to $175 million for 2009