Aditya Birla Minacs buys UK-based BPO

To take over all operations of Compass BPO across the UK, US, West Asia and in India.

Aditya Birla Minacs, the information technology business solutions firm, has announced the acquisition of UK-based Compass BPO, a finance and accounting (F&A) services provider, for an undisclosed sum.

Through this acquisition, Minacs will take over all the operations of Compass across the UK, US, West Asia and in India, bringing Minacs’ F&A employee strength to 600. The founders of Compass — David McCullough and Mark Atkins — will join Minacs’ management team.

With this acquisition, the Aditya Birla Nuvo Group company gets 38 customers in the F&A space. The announcement came on the heels of Minacs’ recent inauguration of its new Global F&A Center of Excellence in Chennai. This would also help the company to reduce its voice transactions business. At present, over 70 per cent of the company’s revenue comes from voice transactions.

“The acquisition fits with our roadmap of becoming a $1-billion (about Rs 4,600-crore) firm in the next three years. We had said earlier as well that we would look at both organic and inorganic routes. But the acquisition is not about adding to the top line, but to get capabilities that can be scaled up further,” Aditya Birla Minacs Chief Executive Officer Dev Patel said.

The company, with a revenue of close to $350 million (around Rs 1,610 crore), is looking at an acquisition that will help attain significant capabilities in sectors like banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), healthcare, procurement outsourcing and insurance.

The F&A outsourcing (FAO) business is expected to rebound and clock a growth of over 20 per cent to reach $3.7 billion (Rs 17,000 crore), according to the Finance & Accounting Outsourcing Annual Report 2010 by Everest Group, a global consulting and research firm.

The study further noted that in the next three years, $4.8 billion (around Rs 22,000 crore) in FAO contracts are up for renewal. The study also reveals that although the number of contracts signed was lower in 2009 compared to recent years, organic growth through contract extensions picked up significantly and contributed to almost 40 per cent of the annual contract value growth in 2009.