Where (in terms of geography, industry, function) is most of Capgemini BPO’s new business coming from?
HG: If I’m just talking in terms of the last months, and no longer than that, North America is again very strong. We have never seen such huge activity, with telephones ringing from everywhere: “Urgent! We need to reduce costs immediately!” So North America is very hot. I would say also the Nordic countries in the last six months have been pretty active. Those are the main areas. After that, probably Germany and France. It’s pretty new – two years ago I was called in by a French company for a “oh, what is BPO? That’s pretty interesting…” kind of conversation, not very serious. But over the last nine months to a year it’s very serious business discussions. The same in Germany and Holland. Continental Europe is very strong. After that, in terms of sectors, I would say that leading the way as ever is manufacturing, because all these guys are under huge margin constraints and need to reduce their costs. I would add financial services – except we don’t know what will happen in terms of regu
