Manpower Inc. Doubles its Business in India

NEW DELHI, INDIA, - Manpower Inc. (NYSE:MAN) has announced today that it has acquired three divisions of ABC Consultants, India’s leading professional executive selection and recruitment firm. As a result of this transaction, Manpower India doubles its size and becomes the clear market leader for permanent placement services in the Information Technology (IT), Information Technology-enabled Services (ITeS) and Retail Financial Services (RFS) sectors in India, one of the fastest growing economies in the world. ABC’s Executive Search and Selection divisions are not involved in the transaction and will continue to operate under the ABC Consultants company name.

Manpower has been investing heavily in an aggressive plan to broaden its recruitment portfolio to encompass both permanent and temporary recruitment services for our 400,000 clients worldwide, and we now have over 2,000 recruiters dedicated to permanent placement services, said Jeffrey A. Joerres, Chairman & CEO of Manpower Inc. This expansion of our business in India further adds to our growing global share of the permanent placement market, which is good news for our clients who are increasingly looking to us for help with both temporary and permanent recruitment for their organizations.

Raghuram Reddam, Director - Human Resources for Motorola India said, by dramatically expanding their presence in India, Manpower will become an even more valuable partner to Motorola, as we continue to rely on them to help us find and manage the best talent available in the marketplace while we grow our own business in India.

India has a very buoyant recruitment market across all industry sectors, led by the IT and ITeS sectors. However, this rapid growth has brought with it a shortage of skilled and experienced staff, particularly in the area of middle management. This will become even more evident by 2010, when it is predicted that India will have approximately 83 million workers.

Soumen Basu, Executive Chairman of Manpower India said, Manpower India first opened its doors in 1999. Since then, we have seen the Indian economy grow at a healthy pace. But with that growth, the labor market has become more challenging for our clients, and they are coming to us for a broader range of services to help them overcome these challenges. We intend to meet the middle management skills shortage by working creatively with our clients to find alternative labor market pools; by using our proprietary training and assessment tools to develop people in the areas that are most in demand; and through our significantly larger team of specialist recruiting consultants, who best understand the local labor market.

Joerres added, the recruitment industry is relatively young in India, and we view it as a tremendous asset to now have the most respected recruiters in the industry as part of the Manpower team. Our leaders have an average of 10 years industry experience, where our competitors’ have on average only two years of experience. With this transaction, we now have nearly 400 total recruiters on our staff, with 80 percent of those dedicated to recruiting individuals for permanent placement at our client companies, and 20 percent dedicated to recruiting temporary and contract staff.

Under the terms of the deal, Manpower India has merged three business practices of ABC operations with its own operations, namely, IT, IT Enabled Services (ITeS) and Retail Financial Services (RFS). This entails transfer of ABC’s senior leadership and team of consultants, ongoing client relationships and candidate databases. Soumen Basu, Executive Chairman of Manpower India, continues to lead the extended management team.