Capita prepares to dispose of education software business

Following a strategic review of our Software division over the past year, we made a decision to focus on a portfolio of core software capabilities which are better aligned with and support our consulting, transformation and digital BPO services, and the vertical markets of the rest of the Group.

We will retain software assets that are catalysts for growing our other services – and plan to dispose of standalone software products that have little overlap or cross-sell with the rest of Capita, such as ESS.

We can today confirm that we are preparing to sell ESS, a standalone provider of management information system (MIS) software for the education sector. A further announcement will be made in due course when appropriate.

As part of this broader review of our software capability, we have today made a separate announcement that we have agreed the sale of Eclipse Legal Systems (“Eclipse”), a standalone legal process software product, to Access UK Limited for £56.5m.

Proceeds from the sale of Eclipse will be used to strengthen the Group’s balance sheet.

Further disposals of standalone software product businesses will be considered in due course as part of the strategic review of the Software division.