back to article It's a bad day to be Serco's CEO... or an investor, come to that

Scandal-hit integrator Serco today issued its fourth profit warning of this fiscal and calendar year, confirmed a £1.5bn write-down and provision to cover to loss-making contracts and effectively exited private sector business process outsourcing. The financial markets reacted negatively, sending the company’s share price …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The direction is clear: Serco will concentrate on its core as a leading supplier of public services…

    because no matter how many time we fuck them over, they still keep coming back....

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nice bit of 'kitchen-sinking' by the new CEO, I expect he compares notes with the new top-man at Tesco as they uncover years of "worst-practice"

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Er... from Wikipedia (so defo all true)

      Soames:

      Soames was born in Croydon and is a grandson of Sir Winston Churchill, the son of Lord and Lady Soames, a nephew of the former Defence Secretary Duncan Sandys and Diana Churchill; the journalist Randolph Churchill and the actress and dancer Sarah Churchill and a great-nephew of the founders of the Scout movement, Robert Baden-Powell and Olave Baden-Powell. His brother is the Conservative MP Nicholas Soames. Soames was educated at St. Aubyns Preparatory School in Sussex and Eton College, and then Worcester College at the University of Oxford,

      Lewis:

      David Lewis was born in 1965, in Yorkshire. Lewis attended Hills Road Sixth Form College in Cambridge from 1979 to 1981. After graduating from Hills Road Sixth Form College, he entered university, graduating from Trent Polytechnic, now Nottingham Trent University, with a BA in Business Studies in 1987

      Probably don't chat that much, I reckon.... Possibly don't even understand each other's accents.

  3. Mad Chaz

    "significant advances in public sector contracting <...> that transfer substantially more risk to suppliers. "

    In other words, we bid a lot lower then we knew it would cost to win the contract and got screwed over when the gov actually expected us to deliver at the price we said and didn't approve all the cost overruns we had planned.

  4. This post has been deleted by its author

  5. Otto is a bear.

    As rule of thumb

    If you buy the business, you can't make a profit, and you can't manage it all away. Serco, and others compete in a very tough market, one where, who blinks first looses. Salesmen don't know how to blink, and if you play that game you need very deep pockets.

    The US companies who gave us that style of market are by an large suffering all the same problems. If some of ours hadn't copied the style, then they would be history, though maybe they should have blinked earlier. In outsourcing there are still those who think they are too big to fail, and whose business could be described as a revenue ponzi scheme.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The worst

    The worst company i've ever worked for,7 years of my life watching them screw people & contacts over.

  7. Tom 35

    It's a bad day to be Serco's CEO...

    Why, it's not like he will get tossed in jail no mater how much they overcharged, under performed. Worse case he has to jump ship with a few million stuffed in his pockets.

    1. CCCP
      Headmaster

      Re: It's a bad day to be Serco's CEO...

      Sorry Tom - it's "worst case". This plague on English is up there with "would of".

      On an unrelated note, will you change your handle when you turn 36? Or is it a bit evil like Juanito veintitrés, like in Con Air [obscure reference warning]?

  8. cantankerous swineherd
    FAIL

    northern rail - the firm that welcomes its customers with the threat of a criminal record.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Supplier of public services."

    Which includes privately-run prisons amongst other joyful activities.

    Not enough lags making license plates for nowt or next-to?

    Oh well.

    1. asdf

      Re: "Supplier of public services."

      Ah lovely private prisons. What could possibly go wrong giving companies a profit motive to store people like cord wood? Its not like they will use the money to lobby the politicians for more business (ie more poor brown people to get paid to abuse).

  10. dan1980

    A bad day to be Rupert Soames?

    With a base salary of £850,000, every day is a great day to be Rupert Soames!

    Sure, his share bonus might be less appealing right now but there's no reason to think they won't still pay him his 150% cash bonus, which would bring his salary to ~£2m.

    Records indicate that the previous CEO - the one who Soames was brought in to replace - bagged £2.3m in his last year so evidently the 'bonus' is kind of assured, whatever happens.

    So no, it's not really a bad day to be Rupert Soames.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Serco

    Do not like

    Not at all

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