Capital braces for five more years of Capita charging us

LONDONERS will doubtless have been delighted to read that the city’s favourite outsourcer

Capita, still struggling to shrug off its “Crapita” tag, has regained the gig running the congestion charge, which has just got pricier. It’s been quite the earner for the support services firm over the years. At the controversial charge’s inception under then-Mayor Ken Livingstone in 2003, the Transport for Londonawarded contract was worth an estimated £230 million for the first five years. Capita landed a two-year extension but lost the job for five years until 2014 to IBM. On regaining it, the contract was worth £145 million and now the next five years, which also include running the expanding Ultra Low Emission Zone should land it £355 million. Not a bad price for taking flak from angry London drivers.

UNILEVER chief executive Alan Jope has been embracing the staycation culture. He has been holidaying in Scotland, taking to Twitter to share a pic of his stay in Islay and writing “one golf course and a few distilleries for when the rain sets in”. You get the feeling there were a fair few showers. The Scot tells one follower: “Wouldn’t be a true Scottish summer without experiencing all the seasons in one day.”

TOUGH times at stock market darling Blue Prism. A couple of years back, the loss-making job automation specialist had fund managers effusively singing its praises, with the rise of the robots set to replace thousands of dull jobs. Fast forward and the shares are half their peak, and Blue Prism is in the top 20 most shorted stocks on the markets, with 5% of the shares out on loan and founder Alastair Bathgate abruptly departing earlier this year. Covid may have strengthened the case for automating drone-like jobs, but this tech stock seems to have missed the bounce.

FAIR winds at shipping broker Clarkson which has seen revenues jump of late, in part down to the rush for oil storage on huge tankers as prices plunged. The company, headquartered at Commodity Quay on St Katharine Docks, has seen a few global crises in its history, which dates back to 1852. Back then Horace Anderson Clarkson, the son of a wealthy lawyer, tapped up a former colleague to run the business. Out-of-work Leon Benham was so poverty-stricken that he walked the 150 miles from Cardiff to London to join Clarkson.