Skip to main content

Resources Global eyes Chinese firms going global


 Resources Global Professionals, a professional services firm, is scouting for acquisitions in China, India and Germany, and sees Asia as its fastest growing market over the next five years, its CEO said.
The unit of Irvine, California-based Resources Connection Inc (RECN.O) assigns its 3,000 full-time consultants to work on clients' projects. The consultants are allowed flexible work schedules and many are paid by the hour.
Resources Global is benefiting from global demand for outsourced professional services by corporate clients including Chevron (CVX.N), Sony Corp (6758.T), Sotheby's (BID.N), Starbucks (SBUX.O) and Yum Brands Inc's (YUM.N) Taco Bell Corp.
More employers globally and in the United States are finding it tough to find skilled technicians, sales agents and engineers, according to ManpowerGroup (MAN.N).
"We want more critical mass for India and China because of the size of the market and the economic growth," CEO Donald Murray told Reuters.
"We currently see more upside in China from new emerging companies that are going global," he added.
The company used to get most of its work in China from multinationals operating there, but is now seeing big Chinese companies as clients, and expects this trend to continue.
The company, which is comfortable spending $100 million or more on an acquisition, is also looking at different types of professional services firms in India, such as in finance or IT.
"For the coming year (2011), we expect all our markets to keep growing and expect Asia to be our fastest growing market ... followed by North America and Europe," said Murray, who led a 1999 management buyout of the company from Deloitte & Touche LLP DLTE.UL.
"Significant" growth in Asia should drive the company's revenue and EBITDA, the CEO told Reuters over phone.
For fiscal 2010, Asia Pacific accounted for just 5 percent of total sales, while North America contributed 77 percent.
The company, valued at around $632 million, reported 2010 revenue of $499 million and last month opened its newest office, in the South Korean capital of Seoul. It expects to open an office in South America next year.
The company, which competes with Deloitte, KPMG KPMG.UL, Ernst and Young ERNY.UL and Accenture (ACN.N), is also eyeing tie-ups.
While its focus is on financial services, Resources Global sees healthcare in United States as a growth industry as it implements new systems to integrate medical records and billing, which should benefit the company.
Shares of Resources Connection, which last traded at $13.65, have slumped 38 percent since early January. Last August, the stock dropped to a 7-year low of $11.

By reuters
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In abrupt turnaround, Olympus admits it hid losses

Japan's Olympus admitted on Tuesday it hid losses on securities investments dating back two decades, bowing to weeks of pressure to explain a series of baffling transactions that have put the future of the firm in doubt. The revelations by the 92-year-old company appear to vindicate ex-CEO Michael Woodford, who has staged a campaign since being sacked on October 14 to force the firm to come clean on nearly $1.5 billion in questionable payments. Olympus President Shuichi Takayama blamed Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, who quit as president and chairman on October 26, Vice-President Hisashi Mori and internal auditor Hideo Yamada for the cover-up, saying he would consider criminal complaints against them. The admission after weeks of denials shocked investors, sending shares in the endoscope and camera maker skidding almost 30 percent and prompting the biggest non-Japanese shareholder to demand the replacement of the entire board. "Ignorance is no defense," said Jo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Last year's iPhones are destroying Samsung's new Galaxy S9 flagship smartphone - Bench Mark Results

Samsung announced the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+, the latest entries in its flagship line of smartphones, at Barcelona's Mobile World Congress — but benchmark results are awkwardly showing the devices scoring significantly lower than many of their competitors. Benchmarks are synthetic tests that give numeric, quantifiable results. They are generally applications programmed to make the devices' systems-on-a-chip (SoC) run a series of tasks and determine how long it takes them to complete. AnandTech is a site that specialises in running rigorous tests like these, and its early findings on Samsung's latest devices are curious to say the least— particularly compared to the latest iPhones, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 — which will power most of the Android flagships this year — and even Samsung's own Galaxy S8 from last year. In a number of tests — such as web browsing, writing, data manipulation, and photo editing — the Galaxy S9's Exynos 9810 consistently deliv...
Post a Comment
Read more

Microsoft nears $8.5 billion Skype buy in web shift

Microsoft is close to buying internet telephony network Skype in an $8.5 billion deal, a source familiar with the situation said, as it seeks to regain ground on growing rivals such as Google. Buying the loss-making but popular Skype would underline Microsoft's need to gain new customers and platforms for its software as smartphones and tablets explode in popularity. Skype, which allows people to make calls at no charge, would also give Microsoft a foothold in potentially the lucrative video-conferencing market as global businesses seeking to reduce expenditure shift to lower-cost ways of communicating. Microsoft has already put more energy and resources into mobile and internet technologies as the use of PCs, which underpin its Windows and Office franchise, is under threat. This change was starkly illustrated last year when Apple's portfolio of coveted consumer goods propelled it past Microsoft to become the world's most valuable technology company. The maker of iPhones an...
Post a Comment
Read more