Mumbai: The fall of Wall Street's giants has left some of their captive units virtually orphans. In the case of Lehman Brothers, whose North American operations were acquired by Barclays and Asia and European operations were taken over by Nomura, reported The Economic Times.

However, the captive, which may have been a hot buy for many third party companies or banks, lost most of its sheen because it no longer had an existing customer. "When there is no business, what is the value in such an operation?' asked a top executive with a leading third-party service provider.

Paul Pinder, Chief Executive of Capita, UK's largest third party BPO, agrees with it, saying that acquiring a captive without a business 'doesn't make much sense'. Capita has grown by acquiring in-house departments and captive units of companies and running them as outsourced operations. In its 24-year-old history, Capita has made 200 acquisitions.

Large IT outsourcing companies have also been hit by troubles of their financial services customers. But they are monitoring the work levels in these client accounts and re-deploying people in projects where the demand is still good. "None of the existing projects have been impacted so far. But we constantly monitor the level of work and re-deploy people in other areas such as manufacturing and telecom, which are still seeing good growth," said an executive of a large Indian company.

The Mumbai-based eClerx Services, which has about 13 percent of its revenues coming from Lehman Brothers, is trying to re-deploy its people in other projects, according to executive director, P D Mundhra. However, this option cannot be exercised by captives.

Merrill, which was acquired by Bank of America, was among the top financial services clients of Tata Consultancy Services. It also has its own captive in India, which primarily undertakes IT-related work, industry sources said. Merrill's captive may be in a better position than Lehman's because Bank America does not have an IT captive and primarily runs back-office processing from Mumbai and Hyderabad. Chances of the Merrill captive being integrated are also greater because Bank of America has a centre in Mumbai.

A consultant, who recently approached some of the captive firms with a joint venture proposal, said there was increased willingness among the India management to work for other clients. �Frankly, I was surprised by the amount of interest,� he confessed.