US banking giant Bank of America will soon hire up to 1,500 people in India at its Hyderabad subsidiary, Continuum Solutions, which opens later this month.

Significantly, the bank has also reserved more land in the city for future expansion and development.

In February, BoA had said that it would employ about 1,000 persons by mid-2005 in Hyderabad, but it has now decided to ramp up operations and thus needs to hire more.

• India and Outsourcing: Complete Coverage

Top executives with the Charlotte-based financial giant said that Continuum Solutions employees will initially work with corporate accounts drawn from London operations and later from the bank's offices worldwide, The Charlotte Observer said on Sunday.

Afterwards Indian workers are likely to work with consumer information, the paper said.

The Indian subsidiary is Bank of America's latest step in outsourcing work to India as a part of its cost-cut drive.

"We expect that this will be a successful though modest part of our overall strategy for supporting our businesses, so we need space for growth if we decide we want to grow it," The Charlotte Observer quoted BoA's technology and operations executive Tim Arnoult as saying.

"Our current thinking is that Continuum Solutions, if everything is successful, probably will top out around 1,500 people over about three years," Arnoult said, says the paper.

He, however, stressed that the employment at Continuum Solutions employment will be less than a hundredth of the bank's total work force which stands at over 180,000, after it acquired FleetBoston Financial Corp on April 1.

Arnoult, said The Charlotte Observer, accepted that Continuum Solutions will displace workers throughout the bank's operations, but he couldn't say how many or from which offices. The bank also has not said how much it expects to save with the move.

The bank has been contracting with firms in India to handle software development since two years, and will continue to outsource IT work to Indian firms.