Serco’s Soames offloads Indian arm for £250m in revival plan

Rupert Soames has delivered on one of the first pledges he made when he became chief executive of troubled services group Serco, with the sale of its massive offshore outsourcing operations to private equity firm Blackstone for £250 million.

Soames identified the business, which supplies back-office services such as customer loyalty programmes, marketing and data management to hundreds of multi-national firms, as non-core in March this year.

Serco bought the business from Blackstone in 2011, paying about £400 million.

Today’s sale price was seen by Shore Capital analysts as at a slightly higher price than expected and by Liberum analysts as slightly below par.

Soames said: “In March we set out our strategy to focus Serco on being a leading supplier of public services. A core part of that strategy was our decision to sell our private sector BPO [business process outsourcing] operations.

“I am delighted that we have agreed this sale to Blackstone and secured this important part of our overall plan. This disposal will not only strengthen further our balance sheet but also enable us to focus on the group’s five core markets.

“Overall this gives us greater financial and operational flexibility to move forward, doing what we do best.”