Simpson is currently on gardening leave and is due to take up his position as divisional managing director of Capita Print & Fulfilment Services on 29 October.

In the role, he will head up Capita Design & Print, Capita Fulfilment Services and Capita Print Management, which was launched earlier this year with former DSR Print Management boss Mark Hughes at the helm.

Hughes said: “We’re incred­ibly serious about investing in this market and for us to be able to attract Paul into this business has been fantastic.”

Hughes, who joined Capita in January, stressed that although the print management arm had only been set up in the past year, the £1.7bn-turnover company, which operates in a range of areas including local government, construction, transport and finance, is by no means new to print outsourcing.

He said: “Capita has been offering a level of PM for a number of years. However, that has been split across many different divisions. Effectively what we are doing is realigning it to get into one central division and one central spend.”

Hughes revealed that the print and fulfilment division is already handling a spend in excess of £30m, some of which is already from contracts such as Capita’s £290m BPO deal with Southampton City Council which was signed last week.

Ominously for the UK’s print management sector, Hughes added that he expects to be competing for general commercial contracts, in addition to large BPO deals.

Communisis chief executive Steve Vaughan said that Alistair Blaxill, who joined Communisis as one of its managing directors in February, would take on all Simpson’s main customer relationships.

He said: “Paul’s departure came as something of a surprise but it has allowed us to rejig management in a way that I had planned to do anyway, so that customers have a single touchpoint rather than us operating in silos.”

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CAPITA FACTFILE
Turnover £1.7bn
Employees 27,800
Clients include govern­ment, Transport for London, Criminal Records Bureau