Serco chief sells £3million stake

OUTGOING Serco boss Rupert Soames pocketed more than £3m as he began selling his stake in the group before his planned retirement.

Soames, a grandson of Winston Churchill who has served as chief executive of the outsourcing giant for eight years, offloaded nearly 1.9m shares on Monday at an average price of 162p each.

He will still hold 8.7m shares, worth about £14.2m based on the current share price after the sale.

The sale of part of his stake came after Soames announced in September that he would step down as chief executive at the end of this year.

He will be replaced by Mark irwin, 57, head of Serco’s UK & europe division.

Soames will remain as an adviser, receiving a proportion of his £850,000 base salary and annual bonus, before retiring in September next year.

The 63-year- old is widely credited for turning around the fortunes of the FTSe 250 group, which was mired in scandal when he took over in 2014.

But Soames also drew criticism over profits from running Test and Trace centres.