Will Serco’s boss surprise long-suffering investors?

A STRING of contract wins appears to have put outsourcing specialist Serco back on track this year, raising questions about its ambitions to grow again.

It could spend money on acquisitions, and it has already bought an engineering firm that provides services to the US Navy.

Last week it emerged that it approached defence firm Babcock – which is larger than itself – earlier this year about a takeover. The move was rejected on the basis that the businesses were too different.

The other option for Serco’s chief executive, Rupert Soames, is to start rewarding its loyal and long-suffering investors with dividends again.

It has been five years since Serco, best known for running prisons, paid a dividend. Around the same time, it was forced to raise £1.5billion in a rights issue to trim its debt pile – and was also plagued by the electronic tagging scandal.

Analysts reckon that Serco could restart paying a dividend as soon as next year.

But as his bid for Babcock shows, the wily Soames has a knack for surprises. Could he make a firm commitment this week?

THE latest flotation of a tech firm in the US, Slack, turned dozens of geeks into millionaires last week when shares soared on its stock market debut.

Cal Henderson, the messaging app’s British chief technology officer, is sitting on a stake worth $643 million (£505 million).

But the British links go further. Slack’s chief executive Stewart Butterfield is a Cambridge alumnus, having studied for a Master’s at Clare College.

His net worth of $1.6billion puts him on an elite list of Cambridge-educated billionaires that includes Ineos co-founder Andrew Currie and its chief financial officer John Reece; Ashmore Group boss Mark Coombs; and Winton Group founder David Harding.

THE UK biotech industry has had a bad few weeks since the Woodford scandal. But Tiziana Life Sciences, a small player listed on AIM and Nasdaq, has some good news.

The company is set to reveal the publication of a scientific article that backs up its hopes of treating liver diseases.

Third-party research has found treatments for moderate-to-severe ulcerative colitis can be administered orally safely and effectively – usually they are given intravenously. That’s good news for Tiziana. Its similar therapy, Foralumab, is in a phaseone trial at the Harvard Medical School involving nasal delivery, with an oral trial starting soon.