50 Thursday November 25 2021 | the times
Business
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Cognizant employs about 300,000
people globally, with more than 200,000
in India and about 7,000 in the UK.
North American clients account for
about three-quarters of its turnover. Last
year it reported revenues of $16.8 billion
and a profit after tax of $1.8 billion.
Demand for its digital services rose
sharply last year as clients had to invest
more in their online operations to reach
locked-down consumers, according to
Humphries. However, the surge in de-
mand placed a premium on skilled
workers. According to its most recentfigures, Cognizant is losing staff at an
annualised rate of 25 per cent — double
the pre-Covid level. “The elevated attri-
tion will lead to demand supply imbal-
ances,” he said. The company plans to
hire some 45,000 university graduates
in India this year, he added.
Cognizant has spent more than
$2.5 billion on acquisitions over the past
three years and will pursue more targets
as it expands beyond the US. At the
same time, Humphries has left a num-
ber of unappealing areas. Cognizant
stopped providing outsourced contentmoderation for social media platforms,
which cost it $178 million in revenue last
year. “It wasn’t in line with our strategy,
it wasn’t good for our brand and it wasn’t
good for morale,” he said.
Humphries said a ransomware attack
during the early stage of the pandemic
cost the company “tens of millions of
dollars”. He refuses to be drawn on whe-
ther Cognizant paid a ransom. “We had
a period of disruption to our revenue,”
said Humphries, who added that it had
invested “significant” sums to modern-
ise its systems.NOUSHAD THEKKAYIL/EPABrian Humphries said that sponsorship of the Aston Martin Formula One team would help to raise the company’s profileBrian Humphries, the boss of IT ser-
vices giant Cognizant, dodged a potent-
ially career-ending bullet a decade ago.
He was working at Hewlett Packard as
head of strategy — a role that gave him
oversight of mergers and acquisitions.
In May 2011, he moved into a new role,
in charge of HP’s emerging markets
division.
Two months after he switched posi-
tions, the Silicon Valley giant opened
takeover talks with Mike Lynch, the
founder of the former FTSE 100
software developer Autonomy.
A month after that, HP unveiled
the $11 billion acquisition. Its
stock crashed on the day of the
announcement, and within a
year, the deal had unravelled. No-
one emerged from the wreckage
with their reputations en-
hanced.
Humphries, 48, said
he had run the rule over
Steady hand puts
Cognizant in pole
position for growth
Autonomy during the reign of the late
Mark Hurd, who was ousted in 2010.
“Mark and I reviewed Autonomy and
we decided not to acquire it,” Hum-
phries said. The Cognizant chief execu-
tive said the pair concluded that Auto-
nomy was too expensive. “It was an in-
teresting company but we never
proceeded to due diligence,” he added.
Humphries, who grew up in Co
Wicklow, moved to Dell in 2013 and
after a two-year stint heading Voda-
fone’s business division he joined Cog-
nizant as chief executive in 2019.
The company is an IT services con-
sultancy and outsourcing Goliath, with
a market valuation of more than
$40 billion. Despite its size, Cognizant
lacks the brand pizzazz of competitors
such as Accenture, Capgemini, IBM
and Infosys. Humphries hopes to make
its name more familiar after signing a
sponsorship deal with the Formula
One team Aston Martin.
The group was formed in 1994 as
the in-house IT development
centre for the business information
and data analytics provider Dun &
Bradstreet Corporation. In 1996, it
began serving external clients
and went public on Nas-
daq two years later.
Headquartered in
Teaneck, New Jersey,IT services giant eyes
further acquisitions
since former HP boss
took the driving seat,
Simon Duke reports