NÂ° 2005-09 Juin 2005 Guillaume Daudin* Jean-Luc Gaffard ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Offshore Outsourcing in the EU Financial Services Industrytime of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. In the past, the service sector was largely consideredimpervious to international competition. With improvements in communication technologies,such as the Internet, services can now cross national borders. Although service offshoring stillremains a small fraction of individual countries’ GDP (Amiti M. and S.J. Wei, 2004a), it iswithout a doubt the newest chapter in the globalisation debate.But offshoring, let alone its consequences, does not appear to be widely understood.Some people interpret it to mean outside the firm, and others outside the country. Media andpolitical attention seems firmly focused on offshore outsourcing, even though domesticoutsourcing is also common. So, the nations still have much to learn about offshoring, andexisting data is not adequate to the task. There are currently no reliable statistical indicators ofthe extent or the nature of offshoring. Besides management consultant reports 2 , there is indeedvery little empirical economic research on service offshoring. Most of the studies carried outso far have been in the United States. Therefore, we thought it would be useful to examinethis phenomenon to distinguish facts from exaggerated claims.Drawing on the experiences of the United States, we can say that, in the aggregate, joblosses in one industry often are offset by jobs created in other growing industries (Amiti M.and S.J. Wei, 2004b; Brainard L. and R. Litan, 2004; Schultz C., 2004). Moreover, Americaneconomists argued that international relocation contributes to lower inflation and higherproductivity, meaning that the overall economy will grow faster (Mann C., 2004; Council ofeconomic advisors, 2004). Catherine Mann (Institute for International Economics) hasestimated that US GDP growth would have been lower by 0.3 percent a year between 1995and 2002 3 without international relocation of jobs in information technology (Mann C.,2003).on the offshoring strategies of leading European companies (polled a representative sample covering more than20 percent of total revenues of Europe’s top 500 companies).2 Looking forward, perhaps the best-know projection is by Forrester Research (2004), an information technologyconsulting firm, which expects the number of US jobs outsourced to grow from about 400.000 in 2004 to 3.3million by 2015. If this estimate turns out to be accurate, then offshoring could result in roughly 250.000 layoffsa year. Goldman Sachs has estimated that offshoring has accounted for roughly half a million layoffs in the pastthree years. According to the McKinsey Global Institute (2003), for every dollar of US services activityoffshored, a net gain of 12 to 14 cents is generated. Another Forrester Research report states that offshore servicespending in Western Europe will grow from 1.1 billion in 2004 to 3.6 billion euros in 2009, with the UnitedKingdom accounting for 76 percent at that point. The IT consultancy firm, Gartner (2003), estimates an ultimategrowth of 40% in offshore outsourcing in Europe. Gartner also predicts that almost a third of leading Europeanbusinesses will include an offshore element in their IT plans by 2005. As a result of this shift of IT servicesoverseas, up to 25 percent of EU and US IT jobs could go to the emerging markets by 2010. But Gartner predictsthat the new European countries will become popular for “nearshore” outsourcing of some operations.3 Indeed, lower inflation and higher productivity have allowed the Federal Reserve to run a moreaccommodative monetary policy.28
Georges PujalsConcerning Europe, the European Monitoring Centre on Change (EMCC) haspublished data 4 for major European company restructuring since the beginning of 2002.Results from January 2002 to December 2004 are presented in Table 1. As in the case in theUS economy, “Relocation” is directly responsible for only a very minor part – 3.6 percent –of large-scale job losses in European countries, although like in the US, offshoring may beincluded in other categories such as “Outsourcing” or “Internal restructuring”. Consideringthe extent of political tension regarding international relocation, it is remarkable that thesedata – with their significant caveats and limitations – indicate that the phenomenon has arelatively small effect on both US and European labour markets, relative to other sources ofjob losses. Although the significance and implications of this finding may be restricted, thefinding demonstrates that the political storm from offshoring has little to do with the sheernumber of job losses.Table 1. Job losses associated with major European firm restructuringType of restructuring 5Planned jobreductions% planned jobreductionsNumber of cases% of casesInternal restructuring 832.345 78.4 1.068 60.7Bankruptcy/Closure 129.133 12.1 371 21.0Relocation 38.471 3.6 122 7.0M&A 52.686 5.0 65 3.7Outsourcing 8.636 0.8 26 1.5Other 850 0.1 5 0.3Total 1.062.121 100 1.657 100Source: European Restructuring Monitor (2005).The current offshoring debate is highly charged, both emotionally and politically. Yetthe discrepancy between the public perception and actual magnitude of this issue is quiteconsiderable, calling for a more objective approach to the subject. While service offshoringhas become established practice and has already been addressed by various studies for the US,it has only recently attracted public attention in Europe. Given the attractiveness of the4 These data include restructuring that affect at least one EU country and entail an announced or actual reductionof at least 100 jobs. Cases are identified through a press review of daily newspapers and business press in the 15old EU Member States. Almost 80 percent of the total volume of services jobs offshored is involving less than300 jobs per project (Roland Berger and UNCTAD, 2004).5 Types of restructuring: Relocation, where the activity is relocated to another country of the European Union ofbeyond its borders; Outsourcing, where the activity is subcontracted to another company which may or may not29
Page 1 and 2: COMPETITION FROM EMERGING COUNTRIES
Page 3 and 4: Competition from Emerging Countries
Page 5 and 6: I. OFFSHORE RELOCATIONS AND EMERGIN
Page 7 and 8: Guillaume Daudin and Sandrine Levas
Page 27: II. OFFSHORE OUTSOURCING IN THE EU
Page 31 and 32: Georges Pujalsable to reduce costs)
Page 33 and 34: Georges Pujals“Offshoring” - th
Page 35 and 36: Georges Pujalsthe number of electro
Page 37 and 38: Georges PujalsTable 3. Financial se
Page 39 and 40: Georges PujalsOffshoring was initia
Page 41 and 42: Georges PujalsChart 8. Relative imp
Page 43 and 44: Georges PujalsAll those categories
Page 45 and 46: Georges PujalsChart 11. Supervisors
Page 47 and 48: Georges Pujalsoutsourcing should th
Page 49 and 50: Georges PujalsMcKinsey Global Insti
Page 51 and 52: International Relocation and Deindu
Page 63 and 64: Relocation: What Matters? Competiti
Page 73: Relocation: What Matters? Competiti
Page 78:
Jean-Luc Gaffard and Michel Quéré
show all

NÂ° 2005-09 Juin 2005 Guillaume Daudin* Jean-Luc Gaffard ...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?