UBS to offshore 750 jobs to India and Poland

Swiss-based investment bank UBS is to offshore around 750 jobs to India and Poland over the next year because of a shortage of local skills.

UBS already has its own knowledge and business process outsourcing centre in Hyderabad in India, which employs around 950 people for research, analytics and transaction and data processing.

The UBS Indian Service Centre opened in June last year and will now ramp up to 1,500 employees by the end of 2007.

UBS confirmed there have been a "limited number" of redundancies as part of the strategy, with most of the affected staff redeployed into other roles.

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In addition to the Hyderabad facility UBS has secured space to build a nearshore centre in Krakow, Poland, which will become operational next year. The facility will accommodate around 250 employees.

A UBS spokesman told silicon.com both centres are part of the bank's "multi-hub strategy" for offshoring.

He said: "An important part of this is we are committed to India. It gives us access to high-quality employees and great talent. There is a plethora of good people there."