NOIDA, 20 December 2006: HCL Technologies Ltd.  (“HCL”), one of India’s leading global IT services companies, today announced a $200 million, mul t iservice, five-year  contract  with Skandia UK, a leading independent provider of long-term savings solutions. As part of the deal, Skandia UK will outsource application optimization, including development, maintenance and support (across all platforms) and remote infrastructure 

management to HCL.  Skandia UK will retain all customer-facing activities. HCL will enable and accelerate Skandia UK’s move to a Service Orientated Architecture (SOA) as part of an initiative to make Skandia UK’s IT landscape a world class, agile infrastructure that will make the savings provider more competitive.   The newarchitecture will deliver productivity improvements and gains guided by an extensive service level agreement (SLA) and periodic external benchmarking.