The combined headcount of ABN Amro and UK's Barclays Plc is set to expand by up to 10,000 employees in India following the $91 billion takeover of the Dutch banking major.

Together with Barclays-ABN Amro, about a half a dozen foreign banks such as Citigroup, HSBC and Standard Chartered could hire over 50,000 employees in India in the next three years. These would be across various operations, including back-end jobs, to be moved from high-cost developed countries.

Seeking to expand their presence in the world's second-fastest growing major economy and benefit from low-cost opportunities in IT enabled back-end operations, foreign banks are increasingly going bullish with their headcount expansion plans in India, an industry observer said.

While announcing their $91-billion cash and stock merger deal, Barclays and ABN Amro on Monday said they would move 10,800 jobs to low-cost locations like India. The deal would also result in net reduction of 12,800 jobs from their combined workforce of 2,17,000 employees.

As a result, sources close to the two firms said, the combined entity could create 8,000-10,000 jobs in India. This would include jobs offshored from other locations and previous hiring plans announced separately by Barclays and ABN Amro.

ABN has about 2,000 people on its payrolls in India. It had said last month it planned to double this number in one year. Barclays, which has close to 1,000 employees in India,

also said last month it would move over 200 jobs to India after closing a call centre in the Besides, the world's largest financial services firm Citigroup, which recently announced a massive reduction of over 17,000 jobs worldwide, is planning to move thousands of jobs to low-cost locations like India.

The Indian payrolls of the US firm, which already employs over 22,000 people in the country, is likely to increase by 5,000-8,000 employees following this restructuring.

Another British banking giant HSBC is also planning to increase India headcount by about 8,000 employees to take its employee strength to 30,000 by next year.

UK-based Standard Chartered Bank also plans to double its over 5,000-strong India headcount in the next three years.

Besides, a number of European banks, such as Dresdner Bank of Allianz Group and Royal Bank of Scotland, which was one of the suitors for ABN Amro, are seeking to expand their presence into India. Their entry would also result in thousands of new jobs being created here.

Besides the usual B-School graduates, banking jobs are being pursued by engineers from institutions like IITs as well in the country.

According to a recent survey conducted by ACNielsen and ORG-Marg, investment banking was named in the top five industries preferred by the students of premier engineering colleges of the country, while investment banking giants like Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers were named to the top 10 list of most coveted employers. 

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