UK firm renames itself, faces flak

LONDON: From Glasgow to Bangalore is a familiar story from a now-monotonous catalogue of Indian off-shoring successes, but the newest outsourcing decision by Britain’s second-biggest mortgage lender and sixth-largest bank has sparked allegations of new ‘post-patriotism’ treason by some of Britain’s largest trade unions.
Amicus, one of Britain’s largest trade unions, claims it has already got British government agreement "in principle, to setting up a second investigation into the off-shoring phenomenon".
If instituted, the new investigation - an independent, possibly visceral inquiry - would add to a high-level British parliamentary probe that began four weeks ago.
Amicus alleges that off-shoring announcement by Abbey, formerly named Abbey National, illustrates a sinister new trend.
Not the off-shoring to India. That’s old hat. Instead, the trade unions are up in arms about a perceived new trend for British companies to re-brand themselves in a way that junks their national identity.
The trade unions say it may be the prologue to a dramatic disaster.
"We haven’t yet got to the American stage of the wholesale export of British jobs," Lee Whitehill of Amicus said, "but a new estimate by Deloitte and Touche says 75 per cent of British companies will have off-shored to India by 2006. Re-branding to lose the strong British national identity makes that easier".
Abbey National has gone by that name since it was set up three years before Indian independence. Critics stress that less than a fortnight before its off-shoring bombshell, Abbey National announced it was re-branding to ‘Abbey’.
Abbey spokeswoman Moira Fleming told this paper the re-branding "had nothing to do with off-shoring".
But the alleged post-patriotism treason is said to have been faced by other British financial services companies such as Churchill insurance, which has the British bulldog for a mascot.
The company sold itself to another firm in order to outsource, sources said.
Meanwhile, in a gloves-off response to official British support for outsourcing to India, trade union leaders are bitter about Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott’s recent remarks urging India’s right to "develop its skills and markets".
Just last week, Prescott said it was "unfair to blame India for the loss of British jobs because of ''outsourcing''". He urged British trades unions to "show a sense of fairness towards India vis-a-vis winning outsourcing deals from some of Britain''s biggest firms".
Abbey’s pilot, back-office processing work in Bangalore will mean roughly 100 new Indian jobs. The operation should be up and running by December and it’s part of 21st-century British banking logic, the bank insisted.
The bank, which hopes Indian workers will help with its aim at the heights of the personal financial services sector, is undergoing a three-year overhaul after losses of nearly one-billion-pounds were announced in February.
"Most UK banks have been looking at off-shoring some of their functions and I can’t predict, but we are looking to relocate some of our UK functions, and give ourselves a new focus," Fleming said.