Capita – there’s good news and there’s bad news

(By Anthony Miller) The good news is that, to no-one’s amazement, Liberata's contract to run the Government’s Learner Support Programme (see More woes (and a little ray of sunshine) for Liberata) has been re-awarded to Capita. Details are sketchy, but Capita will once again take over the contract at the end of next week. Capita won the original £48m, five year contract to administer the Education Maintenance Allowance in September '03.

The bad news is that the OFT has referred Capita’s acquisition of IBS OpenSystems to the competition commission (see the RNS release here). The OFT is concerned that if the deal goes ahead (it has already completed by the way!), the market for Revenues & Benefits software will become a duopoly between Capita and Northgate. This is obviously a blow for Capita; it’s the first time they’ve had an acquisition referred to the competition commission, a process which can take up to six months (see Capita's acquisition of IBS referred to OFT). We will undoubtedly comment more on this as the saga unfolds, and are sure to have an even more interesting conversation with Capita CEO, Paul Pindar, when we meet him in a couple of weeks.