Serco
 |
|
| Public limited company | |
| Traded as | : |
| Industry | Government Services |
| Founded | 1929 |
| Headquarters | Hook, Hampshire, England, United Kingdom |
|
Key people
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Sir Roy Gardner (Chairman) Rupert Soames (CEO) |
| Revenue | £3,011.0 million (2016) |
| £42.2 million (2016) | |
| £16.9 million (2016) | |
|
Number of employees
|
50,000 (2017) |
| Website | www.serco.com |
Serco Group plc is a British outsourcing company based in Hook, Hampshire. It operates public and private transport and traffic control, aviation, military weapons, detention centres, call centres, prisons and schools on behalf of its customers. Serco has been involved in a variety of controversies having a history of problems, failures, fatal errors and overcharging.
It is listed on the and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. Serco operates in Continental Europe, the Middle East, the Asia Pacific region and North America, but the majority of its turnover comes from the UK.
Serco was founded in 1929 as RCA Services Limited, a United Kingdom division of the Radio Corporation of America and initially provided services to the cinema industry. Following the takeover of RCA by General Electric in late 1985, RCA Services Limited was bought out by its local management. It changed its name to Serco in 1987 and has been a listed company since 1988.
On 29 December 2008, Serco acquired SI International.
In November 2014 its share price, which stood at 674p before the taxpayer scandal broke in 2013 collapsed to 218.7p, after four profit warnings. The new chief executive Rupert Soames sold off "scores of divisions". He said the company was suffering from ministers’ improved ability at driving a bargain, and claimed that “the Government has got much more adept at writing contracts and transferring risk to the private sector”. On 17 November 2014, it was announced that Alastair Lyons would resign from his position as chairman of Serco. Lyons referred to “operational mis-steps” for which he took “ultimate responsibility”, but said he had not been forced out. Serco made a loss of £991 million in 2014, reducing to a loss of £69.4 million in 2015.
Sir Roy Gardner was appointed as Non-Executive Chairman on 28 May 2015: he is also a senior adviser to Credit Suisse Group AG.
Serco, as well as its rival G4S, was accused of overcharging the Ministry of Justice on its contract to tag offenders. The firm issued a profit warning for 2014 as a result of the costs of becoming embroiled in an electronic tagging scandal. Serco repaid £68.5 million to the government for its overcharging on the contract. In May 2014 a Survation poll for campaign group We Own It, found that 63% of respondents thought Serco should be banned from bidding for any new public contracts after the firm was investigated for overcharging on government contracts. We Own It held a protest outside the company's annual general meeting on 8 May called "Sick of Serco". The group brought sick bags and proposed a Public Service Users Bill that would provide better, more transparently run services.
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