London, 5 March 2007 –Lawyers from the Global Sourcing Group of Morrison & Foerster have advised UKvisas on a business process outsourcing contract worth £297 million ($583 million). UKvisas is a joint Home Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office directorate which runs the UK's visa services through British diplomatic missions overseas.

Under the terms of the agreements, UKvisas will outsource visa application processing for ten regions (and approximately 75 countries) across the globe.  Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) will establish Visa Application Centres in three regions covering 15 countries and in addition will provide information services, through Internet, e-mail and call centres, to an additional 87 countries in the Europe, Americas and North African regions. The remaining seven global regions will be run by VFS Global, part of the multinational Kuoni travel group. These regions include: Far East; former Soviet Union; Gulf/Pakistan; South Asia; Southeast Asia; Southern, Central, and East Africa; and West Africa.

The services to be outsourced include the establishment of physical Visa Application Centres in 52 countries; the capability to enroll the biometric details of all visa applicants, including photographs and fingerscans; the secure transmission of all visa applicant details; and the provision of information to visa applicants through a variety of channels, including multilingual call centres and web sites.  There is a deadline of the end of 2007 for all applicants for a UK visa to provide biometric details.

The broad Morrison & Foerster team needed for this assignment was led by partner Alistair Maughan, head of Morrison & Foerster’s Global Sourcing Group.  Also from the firm's outsourcing team, Mr. Maughan was supported by Anthony Nagle, Tim Roughton, Masayuki Negishi, Teresa Basile, Kristian Shearsby, and Reinhard Schu.  Tax advice was provided by partner, Trevor James.  The transaction also required significant HR and employment input, which was provided by Ann Bevitt and Suzanne Horne.

Alistair Maughan commented, “This was a highly complex deal covering very many countries with tight timescales.  UKvisas selected three bidders who were all invited to negotiate for one or more of the regional contracts covering different parts of the globe.  We were pleased to be able to support the great team at UKvisas on such a challenging project.”

CSC was advised by in-housers David Gray and Mike Morris.  VFS was advised by James Snape and Katherine Calder of Nabarro.

For more information about UKvisas and this project, see www.ukvisas.gov.uk.