In a bid to increase focus on work related to the public sector, Serco has finally managed to offload its Indian BPO unit to private equity firm Blackstone for £250 million.

Serco originally bought the unit - known as Intelenet - from Blackstone in 2011 for £350 million, making the sale price £100 million less than that of the original purchase. However, the successful deal has caused Serco shares to rise by 4.4 per cent, increasing the service provider’s chance of stabilising after a rocky 2014.

The sale of Serco’s Indian BPO unit was expected to be concluded back in June – the fact that Serco failed to meet this target had led to speculation that the group might search for alternative ways to derive value from the business. It was thought that the original failure to sell was due to the asking price being too high, causing Blackstone to briefly drop out of the race to buy back Intelenet.

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