Serco sells BPO operation for £250m

Serco has agreed the sale of its offshore private sector Business Process Outsourcing operations to private equity funds managed by Blackstone for approximately £250m.

Blackstone said in a statement that this is the largest acquisition by Blackstone in India in terms of enterprise value.

The business expects annual revenues of approximately £235m (Rs 2,405 crore) for this year.

After the change in ownership, the business will be rebranded as Intelenet Global Services.

Serco now employs 51,000 people in 67 BPO service delivery centres in eight countries, of which 48,000 employees and 53 centres are in India. “A core part of that strategy was our decision to sell our private sector BPO operations”. Serco said, if the transaction completes before the end of 2015 then these expectations would be reduced to account for the residual period of 2015 that the disposed operations are no longer part of Serco.

Blackstone has been investing in India since 2005 and has made investments over $3 billion in private equity and real estate. Serco was a good owner for Intelenet and had significantly grown the BPO business in its tenure. With a market leading position in the offshore banking and travel/hospitality verticals and #1 position in domestic India BPO, Intelenet has the core platform to capitalize on future growth opportunities.

Serco, which is taking steps to recover from a string of contract problems and scandals, said in March that it planned to refocus the group on government service contracts and away from the private sector. “Overall this gives us greater financial and operational flexibility to move forward, doing what we do best”, Soames added.