No change in business plan, says Infosys

BANGALORE: Indian computer software bluechip, Infosys Technologies Ltd. on
Thursday said that there were no changes in its business plans despite the
slowdown in global tech markets.

Infosys' shares have fallen nearly seven per cent this week amid market talk
that the Bangalore-based powerhouse had frozen hiring. Infosys managing director
Nandan Nilekani told Reuters that Infosys had not frozen recruitment, and the
company stood by "what we said at the end of the third quarter."

In early January, when it reported a 125 per cent jump in third-quarter
earnings, Infosys said that it did not expect to be hit by a slowdown in
technology spending in the United States - its largest market. At that point,
Nilekani said that Infosys had polled some of its larger clients and expressed a
desire to expand business with Infosys, not reduce it.

Other leading Indian software companies have also fallen sharply this week.
The shares of Wipro, the nation's largest company by market value and
second-largest software service exporter, have dropped seven per cent. Shares of
Hyderabad-based Satyam Computer Services, the fourth-largest software exporter,
have tumbled 7.5 per cent.

Those declines have paralleled the 6.45 per cent drop this week in the
tech-laden US Nasdaq composite index.

That drop has been triggered by a wave of profit and revenue warnings by
leading North American technology companies like Nortel Networks Corp, the
world's No. 1 supplier of fiber-optic network equipment, and Dell Computer Corp
and Hewlett-Packard Co, the world's second and third largest personal computer
makers, respectively.

Earlier on Thursday, Merrill Lynch said that the revenue slowdown at Nortel
would not have a significant impact on most Indian IT firms, including Infosys.

(C) Reuters Limited 2001.