The move comes on top of 340 staff already recruited since operations began at its Bangalore centre in April, Reuters Group Plc editor-in-chief Geert Linnebank told a news conference in India's high-tech hub of Bangalore.

"By the end of next year our centre in Bangalore will employ 1,200 people. Of this, 750 will be employed in the data management centre and the rest in other functions," Linnebank said.

The moves are part of the information group's "Fast Forward" programme which aims to drastically cut costs and improve profitability.

The decision will mean the disappearance of 450 data processing jobs at other Reuters centres around the world, a senior company official said.

The data management centre inputs information on companies, debt and equity issues, mergers and acquisitions, securities pricing and company transactions.

"The English-speaking market will be catered to from here and the rest will be from European and other Asian regions," said Justin Abel, Reuters global head of data operations.

This would mean the shift of 50 percent of the firm's data operations to Bangalore, he said.

"About 450 jobs will disappear from the data management centres in other places" as a result of the decision, he told reporters.

Reuters joins a flood of firms such as HSBC, telecoms group AT and T, and research firm Ernst and Young that have moved jobs to India where computer-literate, English-speaking workers earn a fraction of their Western peers.

Reuters data operations employ 1,000 staff in over 40 global locations but the main centres are in Bangalore, White Plains in New York, Tiverton in England and Singapore.

A small editorial team in Bangalore will work mainly on providing new types of coverage for Reuters news reports, with an initial focus on corporate earnings reports and broker research on US companies. "A team of 20 journalists are in place and it will be doubled," Linnebank said.

Global managing editor David Schlesinger said there would be no job losses in the editorial division as a result of the new Bangalore jobs.

By early 2005, Reuters will also create an internal business services operation at the Bangalore facility that will form part of its global finance division to process the group's financial transactions.

"The operational launch of the centre is targeted for the first quarter of 2005. The transition of support activities to Bangalore will be complete before the year-end 2005," a company statement said.

The centre will help improve finance support services and create a "simpler and flatter business services organisational structure," it said.

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