Capita has a made a bid to take over business processing, technology and procurement specialist Xchanging, causing the value of Xchanging shares to rocket by over 50 per cent.

However, Capita faces stiff competition from private equity firm Apollo Global Management. Xchanging recently revealed in a statement to the press that Capita placed an initial bid at 140p per share, in cash raised to 160p, while Apollo has made a separate offer of 170p per share.

The bids were made shortly after Xchanging admitted that its procurement division had performed poorly for the first half of the year; the company’s CEO Ken Lever has also indicated to the board that he intends to retire from his position at the end of 2015.

These takeover offers have come at a time when an increasing number of organisations are looking to outsource administrative processes to third party specialists, such as Xchanging, in order to increase focus on core tasks and improve their technological capabilities.

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