Indian Firm Buys Outsourcing

Tata Consulting Services,the leading outsourcing company in India,is buying Citigroup's India support operations for 505 million dollars.TCS also got a 2.5 billion dollar contract to provide outsourcing to Citi for nine and a half years.The sale is another step in Citi's divestiture program,which aims to reduce the financial firm's ancillary portfolio.Citi is also laying off 11 equity research analysts based in the U.S..About seven percent of the more than 3,000 companies currently covered by Citigroup will be temporarily discontinued.Citi expects to resume coverage of a certain number of the firms in coming quarters.It is believed that Citi's headcount will be reduced by 23,000 by the end of the year.