My article published in year end issue of The Economic Times

Welcome 2010

In retrospect, 2009 did turn out to be much better than we anticipated. The capital markets have recovered from their lows, the job losses have been minimal in India and in most cases pay cuts have been restored. Further, as a barometer of things to come, most engineering and management campuses are reporting better off take and thereby indicating a positive economic outlook.

2009 was a defining year for several professionals and the job market witnessed a return of sanity after the three year bull phase. Senior professionals chastened by the past experience of excessively focusing on compensation and thereby making short term career calls are now looking to focus on the long term. Across the board, compensation levels were either static or witnessed modest single digit increases during the year and will continue to remain so as companies may not go overboard this time around. However, we are seeing big spikes in variable compensation even across traditional sectors as companies prefer to pay more for performance and keep fixed costs under check. Stock options which had temporarily lost its sheen are seen to be back in vogue.

The financial services sector bore the brunt of the slowdown. The retail financial services and broking businesses witnessed job losses as most banks and NBFCs wound up unprofitable lines. However, the wholesale and investment banking businesses have continued to hire selectively especially in the area of debt capital markets and related areas. We expect the situation to turn around across the sector gradually by the third quarter of the year. Compensation and bonuses in the sector have come under intense scrutiny from the regulators and are unlikely to see major upheavals in the near term, though in relative terms, executives in the sector continue to be the highest paid.

Looking forward, we expect the power and heavy infrastructure sectors to continue its robust growth spurring demand for professionals in the areas of project management, especially mega projects and CFOs with big ticket fund raising expertise apart from project specific niche areas. Further, we have seen increased demand for expatriate executives and returning Indians as local expertise is lacking or non existent in new growth sectors like power, airport infrastructure and allied areas which have been opened up to the private sector. However, the commercial and residential real estate sector which witnessed steep erosion in capital values seems to be limping back to action, but the outlook still seems hazy.

As growth plateaus in sectors like telecom, IT & ITeS one expects moderate hiring activity to compensate for natural attrition, though in telecom, due to emergence of new players the attrition levels will be higher across levels. Rapid digitization of government departments also presents a huge opportunity as companies due to slowing global demand are increasingly focused on the local market. Hence we do expect some additional jobs in this space.

The traditional manufacturing and engineering sectors dominated by large Indian conglomerates is set for a huge management overhaul as the next generation leadership is poised to take charge, giving rise to job opportunities. The other large sector which is emerging from the slowdown is retail which is slated to grow given lower real estate values and establishment costs and will emerge as one of the key sectors to watch out for, in the near future. Sectors like healthcare and FMCG continue to be robust, while we see increased action in areas like education as the private sector looks to play a larger role in the sector. The automobile sector seems to be back on track with several global majors vying for the local market with a shift in focus to smaller and more fuel efficient vehicles even as the top end market continues to expand in India.

Going forward, the green sector is poised to take off as the global debate on climate change intensifies. We expect to see the creation of several thousand jobs in the next decade in the areas of renewable energy, environment management, water and waste management, carbon trading and other climate related sectors as the government and the private sector gets its act right. Though these are early days yet, for sheer potential, the green sector could rival the IT & ITeS sectors in its ability to create new jobs in the near future.

In general, as we go in to the next decade, with the emergence of Indian multinational companies, we are seeing the gradual globalization of management teams in Indian corporations as they start recruiting senior expatriate executives who have the ability and experience of managing scale, complexity and geographical diversity apart from bringing global best practices to the table. On the whole, India and Indian companies are increasingly becoming attractive for expatriates who are keen to be part of our growing influence in the global business landscape.

With the increasing debate and scrutiny on corporate boards and governance, companies are seeking board candidates who lend credibility and provide independent counsel to CEOs and business leaders.

While the tide has certainly turned and things are only getting better it is important for companies and executives not to forget the lessons of the immediate past as they address new challenges and opportunities. On the balance, it has to be said that the India Inc. managed the slowdown reasonably well and one can look forward to a more positive start to 2010!

Follow the link to see the piece on ET

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Features/The-Sunday-ET/As-You-Like-It/No-scarcity-of-job-opportunities-in-2010/articleshow/5382852.cms?curpg=1

NYT Report on Women CEOs in India basis EMA Partners study

Female Bankers in India Earn Chances to Rule

MUMBAI — In New York and London, women remain scarce among top bankers despite decades of struggle to climb the corporate ladder. But in India’s relatively young financial industry, women not only are some of the top deal makers, they are often running the show.

HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS and Fidelity International in India are run by women. So is the country’s second-biggest bank, Icici Bank, and its third-largest, Axis Bank. Women head investment banking operations at Kotak Mahindra and JPMorgan Chase and the equities division of Icici. Half of the deputy governors at the Reserve Bank of India are women.

In a country where parents in some areas still prize boys over girls; where overall female literacy rates are poor; and Sania Mirza, a top tennis player, said this month that she would quit playing after marriage, the banking industry’s wealth of women in management may seem surprising. But women in the industry, many of whom have also worked in London and New York, say India provided the right combination of supportive, mostly male, managers and a diverse work environment that did not require them to be “one of the boys” to succeed.

This “isn’t a golf-playing, beer-drinking homogeneous culture,” said Naina Lal Kidwai, group managing director and country head of HSBC in India and a former head of Morgan Stanley’s investment bank in India. Male bankers and managers run the gamut from devoutly religious to devoted family men to late-night socialites.

Women “could join the workplace on their own terms,” Ms. Kidwai said. “You still have to network, you still have to work hard, but that made it easier.”

That means India is without an old Wall Street staple: Women who feel they must act like the stereotypical male banker to advance. There are no swaggering “masters of the universe” in this group. Top female managers regularly wear saris and talk openly about their children and husbands.

These women handle many of India’s biggest deals — raising $9.7 billion for the power company NTPC or negotiating Vodafone Group’s purchase of an $11.1 billion stake in Hutchison Essar.

Almost all of them are in their 40s and 50s, are from wealthy backgrounds, went to excellent schools in India and abroad, and graduated at the top of their classes before excelling at the bank they joined. So they often enjoy the same status as the men who were their competition and their banking clients.

Banking may be more of a meritocracy than other professions, women in the business say, because there is an easy way to keep score: Look at the bottom line.

“You got your next big challenge based on your performance and your potential, not whether you were male or female,” said Chanda Kochhar, chief executive of Icici Bank, where women make up 40 percent of the senior management. Mrs. Kochhar has been at the bank for her entire 25-year career, moving from corporate to retail banking, then directing the international business before becoming chief financial officer.

Women “excel when they are subject to an open competition,” said Shyamala Gopinath, one of the Reserve Bank of India’s two female deputy governors.

India operations of big global banks constitute a tiny portion of overall profits, because debt markets and deal size and volume are smaller than in developed countries. But India’s importance has grown as investment banks bet on emerging markets for growth and simultaneously move more complicated jobs to India to cut costs at home.

So sometimes these women oversee more employees than many top managers at the banks’ headquarters.

About 11 percent of HSBC’s 331,000 employees are in India, for example, and of JPMorgan Chase’s 220,000 employees, nearly 7 percent are in India.

One in five of India’s big bank, insurance and money-management companies is headed by a woman, according to a study by the headhunting group EMA Partners. By contrast, there are no women leading major American or European banks, and no woman has ever run a Wall Street investment bank.

Bosses sometimes gravitate toward women in India because they think “women are less corruptible, more straightforward and above board most of the time,” said K. Sudarshan, managing partner, India, for EMA.

In terms of compensation, none of the women interviewed said they had ever felt they were paid a different amount than their male counterparts.

“Here salary is totally nondiscriminatory,” said Usha Thorat, the other female deputy reserve governor at India’s central bank. The idea that women might be paid less for the same job as men in the United States “came as a surprise to me,” she said.

At the same time, women in banking in India say they have always felt more pressure than men.

“Always, that is a given,” Ms. Kidwai said. “It was very clear we had to perform better and work harder.”

She added that the women now heading banks had often been the first women hired in their early jobs and had been “watched like hawks.”

And they all relied heavily on a support network of family and India’s cheap labor pool to help watch their children. Some enlisted mothers and mothers-in-law for child care for months or years, and all of them employed full-time nannies and maids.

The length of maternity leave differs from bank to bank, but the average is about three months.

Meera Sanyal, head of RBS in India, started working in India at a branch office of Grindlays Bank in Calcutta, dealing with a barrage of upset corporate customers and a unionized staff that resented her for replacing an older man. She revamped the way the bank handled clients, according to profitability; learned Bengali to communicate better with the local staff; and ultimately convinced reluctant unions to accept automation, though it would mean layoffs.

She was working at Lazard in India when she became pregnant with her first child. She recalls that when she told her boss she wanted to work flexible hours after her baby was born, he said: “Are you crazy? We’ve invested a lot of money in you.”

Rather than quit, she said, she vowed to work so hard until she gave birth that Lazard would feel it had gotten its money’s worth. She wrapped up a deal on July 6 and delivered the baby a day later. After that, her boss reconsidered, allowing her to work flexible hours for the same pay. There are several men, she said, who “made it possible for me to do what I wanted to do.”

Now she is doing the same for other women at the bank. Recently, a risk manager said she needed to quit because she was pregnant and had been prescribed bed rest. Ms. Sanyal suggested that the bank set up a home office instead that would allow her to work from bed. After having a healthy baby, “she’s back at work and absolutely a star performer,” Ms. Sanyal said.

“Small things like that cost us nothing,” she added. “It is just a way of being more flexible.”

Kalpana Morparia, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase in India, had some simple advice for Western banks that are trying to increase the number of women at the top. “Just be gender neutral,” she said. “Men are just as smart as we are.”

You may see the original link to the story http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/world/asia/28iht-windia.html?pagewanted=1