NEW DELHI, JULY 29: Leading IT hardware firm, Hewlett Packard (HP) today announced hiving off four of its business divisions into a new company Agilent Technologies as part of a worldwide restructuring.Agilent is being created by hiving off four divisions - Test and Management, Chemical Analysis Group Healthcare, Solutions Group and Semi-conductor Products Group - which contributed 7.6 billion dollars to HP's turnover in 1998.However, HP said it was not sure as yet, when the new entity will be able to successfully register in India. "We are only hopeful that the new entity comes into being by November one," Kewal Khanna, new country manager and president of Agilent Technologies told reporters here.He said Agilent was the result of HP's plan to strategically realign itself into two fully independent companies and 120 employees of HP in India out of a total 327 have been already inducted into the new corporate entity.He said in countries like China, HP found very difficult to register itself as acorporate entity and added that in India too there would be some delays in getting the new firm registered.After the hiving off, the computer and imaging businesses will retain the Hewlett-Packard company name."We will be two seperate entities worldwide and also in India," Khanna said.Internationally, HP would get the two corporate entities listed as separate divisions though the initial public offer (IPO) could be expected only after a parity between the two stocks ie., HP and Agilent, was established at the stock markets.Khanna, however, said the company had no plans to get itself listed on the stock markets in India."We do not have any plans to have Indian shareholding in the company," he said.Agilent, will have its headquarters in Palo Alto, California and will have 43,000 employees in more than 40 countries.When asked Agilent's investment plans in India, Khanna said the parent company, HP has chalked out some investments in the country but said he was not sure of Agilent's investmentplans after the restructuring.
