Serco buys Australian BPO firm Excelior

Considerations includes A$13 million; gives foothold in Australia, New Zealand. 

UK-based Serco Group, which earlier bought Mumbai-based back office services provider Intelenet Global Services, has further expanded its global BPO capabilities by acquiring Excelior, the contact centre business of Australian firm Skilled Group. 

According to an announcement made by Skilled Group to Australian Stock Exchange, the company has entered into an unconditional agreement to sell Excelior to Serco for a total consideration of A$13.2 million. This includes an earn-out payment of up to A$5 million payable over the next two years upon achieving certain revenue targets. The agreement was signed with Serco Pty, the Australian subsidiary of Serco. 

Skilled Group also said the sale of Excelior was in line with the company’s strategy to focus on its core business after divesting the non-core assets. Skilled Group, which provides labour hires and workforce services in Australia and New Zealand has over 160 offices with revenues of around A$1.9 billion. 

According to industry sources, the process to acquire Excelior was initiated by Intelenet Global Services much before it got acquired by Serco. However, in the new scheme of things, Intelenet Global is expected to drive the post the merger integration of Excelior with Serco. 

Serco, a global services company, had acquired Intelenet in June this year for £385 million (about Rs 2,770 crore). Before acquiring Intelenet, Serco had about 8,000 people located in India as a part of its BPO practice. 

With the addition of about 32,000 people from Intelenet, Serco BPO has now a headcount of about 40,000. 

Excelior was established in 1999. The company employs about 2,000 people in Australia across four centres including Box Hill in Melbourne, Bendigo in Victoria, Burnie in Tasmania and Robina in Qeensland.