Wednesday 10th June, 2015

 One of India's biggest outsourcing firms is considering a takeover bid for Equiniti, the British-based group which manages the pensions of millions of UK civil servants.

Equiniti is one of the UK's biggest providers of business process outsourcing services, which handled some aspects of Royal Mail's £3.3bn privatisation in 2013.

A takeover of Equiniti by Wipro would be one of the largest Indian takeovers of a UK company; by value, it would trail deals such as Tata Motors' purchase of Jaguar Land Rover and Tata Steel's acquisition of Corus, both of which took place nearly a decade ago.

Previously owned by Lloyds TSB, Equiniti counts more than half of the members of the FTSE-100, including HSBC, Marks & Spencer and Shell, among its clients.

Equiniti describes itself as "the leading provider of shareholder services in the UK based on revenues and the number of underlying shareholder and employee records administered, providing services to more than 1,000 corporate clients and 17 million shareholders".

Sources said that Equiniti could be worth well over £1bn when it is sold or floated.