THE market may correct itself earlier than a bill undercutting the Philippines’s young business-process outsourcing (BPO) industry becomes a law, an executive of a merged BPO company said.

Responding to questions on when the merger of NCO Group Inc. and APAC Customer Services Inc. would be completed, Ronald Rittenmeyer said he doesn’t see the crisis in the European Union and the drag in the US economy reaching beyond 2012.

“I can’t imagine this; I don’t expect it would be beyond 2012. Sooner or later, it won’t be a function of global solution to the crisis: it would just be a function of market conditions. I would not project this [crisis] to take very much longer,” Rittenmeyer said.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, the formal announcement in the Philippines of the NCO-APAC merger, Rittenmeyer noted that the crisis, especially “the issues of the current market, the euro and Europe,” has impacted on companies.

He noted that there are “ripple effects,” especially in financing leads based on market conditions that have made the market very vulnerable.

“But it’s somewhat more of a function of how the markets play,” Rittenmeyer said. Even though the two companies are still not merged formally, “we’re beginning to mirror what we do as a merged company, ” he said.

An APAC statement announced last year that it was acquired by One Equity Partners (OEP), the private investment arm of JPMorgan Chase & Co., “through an all-cash transaction with an aggregate equity value of approximately $470 million.”

“Under the terms of the agreement,” OEP, which is the majority owner of NCO, “will pay APAC stockholders $8.55 per share in cash, which represents a premium of approximately 57 percent over APAC’s closing share price on July 6, 2011. The acquisition is anticipated to be funded through committed equity and credit facilities and is not subject to any financing contingencies.”

The transaction was expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2011.

However, Rittenmeyer said he expects the merger to be completed sooner than a law restricting outsourcing jobs outside of the United States is passed.

He noted that the murmurs about such move should be taken into context.

“We’re in an election season so we have to wait and see what laws are developed. It’s too early to have a statement. At this stage, it would be inappropriate for me to have a comment; for me to speculate. At this point, it’s a statement, it’s not a law.”

Early this year, US President Barack Obama spoke again against outsourcing and called it “insourcing.”

Nonetheless, Rittenmeyer said he “doesn’t anticipate” layoffs in any of the companies merged.

“It is our intention to employ as many people. It’s kind of hard to give projections, especially for the Philippines. We don’t do that [expansion or closure of facilities] without a lot of thought.”

The merged companies would bring to 13,000 the number of employees under Rittenmeyer’s Philippine area of responsibility.

With NCO’s acquisition of APAC, the number of sites would hit to eight, with three—Cubao, Leyte and Alabang—from the latter.