back to article Blighty floods with techies' tears as Capita boss Parker quits

Capita chief Andy Parker is stepping off the executive merry-go-round after the little loved outsourcing company today reported financial results that showed a crash in profits - the worst in its corporate history. The London-listed business told the City that costs related to contract delays and weak trade in the technology …

  1. Lotaresco

    I'm so sad...

    Now if only Capita could disappear without trace and their CL1 contracts with them. Getting some info on how that deal came into being the first place would also be welcome.

    1. MyffyW Silver badge

      Re: I'm so sad...

      You know a company is screwed when a recruiter takes 10 minutes in evading who the client company is. You then politely tell them there isn't enough tipex thinner in the world to persuade you to work for said conglomerate and the recruiter sympathises.

  2. TRT Silver badge

    Crapita...

    put the UK government in a very tricky position with the Israeli government the other month. You know how Capita got the job of chasing up the TV licenses for the BBC? And you know how they wrote to all the addresses without licenses or where they suspected more licenses were needed due to size of property and everything? Well there was that letter they sent to the Israeli embassy addressed to "The Occupier(s)"...

    1. Simon Harris

      Re: Crapita...

      I so wish that was true.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Don't let the door hit you on the way out ...

    is this because Capita has to shoulder the cost of PIP appeals ?

  4. This post has been deleted by its author

  5. Voland's right hand Silver badge

    It's tears

    Ever heard the phrase: "Tears of joy"?

    1. macjules

      Re: It's tears

      If so, the tears have not stopped running down my face. Worst company ever to work for, and I worked at BT in the 90's which is a pretty good benchmark of how not to run a company.

      Trouble is that they are going to get all those IR35 contractors coming to them from the MoD, let alone the fact that they are probably going to get a lot of contracts back from Steria after the "Test results? What test results?' fiasco.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It's tears

      Well said. It's incredible that nothing has been done about them before now. I'm so pleased that they are struggling.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The most bewildering thing about Capita

    (and fellow taxpayer parasite Serco)

    is that they are responsible for running such a diverse range of businesses that you'd think they'd be good at one of them - but apparently not.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The most bewildering thing about Capita

      If you run a diverse range of businesses with a one size fits all approach, what's the betting that all of them are almost equally badly run? If you take the average of all the points on a circle, you get the centre. Which is not a point on the circle.

    2. JimmyPage Silver badge
      Stop

      Re: such a diverse range of businesses

      Clearly you are a youngster, otherwise you'd know this is the SOP of western capitalism.

      1) Start a business. Do well, become successful

      2) Acquire other business you believe are related to your core business (1)

      3) Go to (2). Rinse and repeat until

      4) you "discover" that trying to align several differing business models, cycles and markets costs you more as a conglomerate than it would if the business units were discrete so:

      5) Divest yourself of the superfluous business to concentrate on your "core business"

      6) Goto 1

      This is all the better if it can be achieved with tankerloads of taxpayers money ...(see Rolls Royce, GEC, British Aerospace, British Leyland, British Telecom ....)

      1. Lotaresco

        Re: such a diverse range of businesses

        "Clearly you are a youngster, otherwise you'd know this is the SOP of western capitalism."

        You must be a bit of youngster yourself, James, because you say:

        "1) Start a business. Do well, become successful"

        That's not how capitalism works in the UK. It works like this.

        1) Have a burning desire to get rich quick.

        2) Realise that it takes too long to build a business.

        3) Head to Westminster with some cash in pocket and take a few MPs out to lunch/dinner/Bubblegum Rhinos/Stringpersons/whatever.

        4) With their support under your belt, lobby for "a moribund government agency" to be improved by transfer into the private sector, for peppercorn payment to "preserve vital jobs".

        5) Sign a golden handshake deal to let the new private company operate for a decade without "unfair" competition.

        6) Strip the assets, borrow billions, saddle the new company with debt.

        7) Siphon the borrowed cash to your web of shell companies across the Isle of Man, Channel Islands, Caribbean, Ireland, the Seychelles and the Netherlands. Put most of it into your own anonymous accounts.

        8) Invest the company pension fund in one of your shell companies.

        9) Transfer the pension fund to your web of shell companies.

        10) Declare massive loss, sack the employees, close the business.

        11) Retire to your secret Caribbean hideaway.

        1. Alister
          Thumb Up

          Re: such a diverse range of businesses

          Thumbs up for Bubblegum Rhinos / Stringpersons

          1. Lotaresco

            Re: such a diverse range of businesses

            "Thumbs up for Bubblegum Rhinos / Stringpersons"

            Thank you, kind sir.

        2. macjules

          Re: such a diverse range of businesses

          You left out "Buy big yacht and hire a moron from the Monaco Morons Yacht Club to oversee the financial collapse of your empire"

    3. Nezumi
      Facepalm

      Serco are awful

      Had to reply to this...

      Serco are truly terrible. My employer has a branch office that has 6 or so desktop boxes in the entire (small) building that Field, 1st and 2nd look after (sometimes). The rest are their responsibility. God only knows why...

      I had a call from a Serco field drone asking where one of their computers was because they couldn't find it. To which I replied 'I don't know they're your computers'. He hung up.

      The point being they're not part of my employers estate. That's the point. How would I know? Literally.

    4. dreadlockz1234

      Re: The most bewildering thing about Capita

      They're running too many different businesses in my view. Too many small acquisitions which won't ever amount to much. The latest profit warnings, write-downs and so on, the big fall in the share price over a year or so, forthcoming loss of their CEO, the company due to be taken out of the FTSE-100 index of the biggest UK companies and various other negative stories in the media recently just make it look like the remaining management there is struggling. More changes are needed, a really big overhaul of how they are run and who does the running.

  7. Fihart

    Capita, you must be kiddling !

    Hear of case where they sent two of their monthly TV Licence letters to the same address warning that they were scheduled to visit on a specific date. Date different on the two letters. Either lying or bizarrely inefficient.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Either lying or bizarrely inefficient.

      My wife was given a date for a PIP home assessment a couple of weeks ago.

      Come the date and time, and (for some reason unsurprisingly) no show.

      An hour after the allotted time, I called the PIP helpline, and was told that the appointment had been cancelled, and that their systems showed my wife had been called *and* texted 3 days previously. I queried this and was told "the systems right"

      At the same time my wife was taking a call - from the same department - apologising for cancelling the appointment and confirming that there had been no communication with her. She queried this and was told "the systems right".

      If only we had recordings of those conversations ... oh - we do. Thank you asterisk !!!

      1. Commswonk

        Re: Either lying or bizarrely inefficient.

        By what process have you eliminated the possibility that it could be both?

        1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

          Re: Either lying or bizarrely inefficient.

          By what process have you eliminated the possibility that it could be both?

          Left hand hasn't even been informed of the existence of right hand, let alone met them..

  8. Biggus
    FAIL

    Crapita , wait for the bad news on RPP

    Just breaking; RPP - The MOD recruiting project for all 3 services about to miss deadline in April 2017.

    Project years behind schedule. Good job they took on all those clue less extra Injuns to do the coding.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Crapita , wait for the bad news on RPP

      I'll laugh out loud here, as someone who worked on TAFMIS, the predecessor of RPP. Capita, it seems, have been permitted to do things (such as offshore) that were not permitted for previous systems and *still* can't nail a system together. Coming next, no doubt, will be Capita's EDS moment when hundreds of thousands of recruiting records go missing.

  9. John Sager
    FAIL

    Does anyone have a good word to say about them?

    My crap Crapita story is the TVL one, and frightening my elderly MiL with the usual nastygrams, even though she had a licence, and free to boot because of her age. Turns out they had no way of dealing with alias addresses, where the account address in their database is not quite the same as the Postcode Address File one. Got her MP involved but no satisfactory resolution:(

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I like Capita

    They are great to work for. They pay me lots of money. They do great work. I like their big bonus cheques. I made so much money from them I have been able to leave.

    Love,

    Parker.

  11. dreadlockz1234

    Simpler, more focused business

    Why did it take so long to work out this was needed? Just makes it look as though they were forced into making changes. I worked for them and it felt a lot like GEC, who I also worked for. We know what happened to them...

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