Pindar to leave Capita after 26 years at the top
OUTSOURCING firm Capita yesterday said its longstanding chief executive Paul Pindar will step down next year, after 26 years with the company.
He will be succeeded by the current deputy chief executive and deputy operations chief Andy Parker, effective from 1 March 2014.
Pindar, who has been at the helm of the FTSE 100-listed firm for 14 years, is leaving to establish a portfolio of private equity opportunities.
Capita’s revenues have soared more than ten-fold under his leadership.
Pindar, 54, originally trained as a chartered accountant, before joining private equity firm 3i, moving to Capita after advising on the £330,000 management buy-out. He was a non-executive director of retailer Debenhams from 2006 to 2010.
Speculation had been rife that rival outsourcing firm Serco was looking to poach Parker for its chief executive role after Chris Hyman stepped down last month, which some think may have accelerated Parker’s widely-expected promotion. “It had felt like Parker was being groomed for the chief executive role for the past 12 to 18 months,” Mike Allen, analyst at Panmure Gordon, told City A.M. “He knows the ins and outs of the business.”
Parker will step down from the operations part of his role at the start of next year “to ensure a seamless transition” and will be replaced by Dawn Marriott-Sims, currently executive director of Capita’s workplace services division.
The firm said in a separate statement that it is on track to achieve its target of eight per cent organic growth for the full year and an operating margin of 13 per cent to 13.5 per cent.
“The results are in line with our forecasts and it’s probably a good time to hand over the reigns,” said Allen.
Capita has avoided the blemish of scandals surrounding peers G4S and Serco, which have been accused of fraud relating to government-awarded prisoner-monitoring contracts.
But Pindar will still face a grilling from a committee of MPs tomorrow, alongside executives from Serco, G4S and Atos, on government contracts.