News has just broken that Capita is to acquire rival Vertex’s private sector business for £40.5m in cash, ‘on a cash free, debt free basis’. The business concerned made revenue of £48.8m in its year to 31 March, and a pro forma operating profit of £4.6m (a 9% margin - and some way off Capita's 14% underlying margin). Capita will take on some 1,400 Vertex employees across five sites in the UK, in Liverpool, Manchester, Forres, Salford and Sheffield, and an additional 200 people in India. Vertex’s private sector operation has some pretty big name clients across the retail, utilities and telecommunications markets, including Marks & Spencer, The National Trust and Scottish Power.
Capita is now really flexing its muscle in the UK BPO market, having only recently snapped up the other major UK call centre services provider Ventura (see Capita gains 8,000 with Ventura deal). There is plenty more to say on this, which I will cover later in UKHotViewsExtra.