Building GardaWorld into a Creator of Global Champions and Reshaping an Industry

When reflecting on our recent announcements, it was almost 40 years ago that I made my way to the US to further my career as a baseball umpire while pursuing graduate studies. Being a “Blue” was an experience that taught me invaluable lessons in communication and negotiation. As an umpire, you manage people and situations, you control your stress and the stress of others, and above all, you must stay focused.

I didn’t end up staying a baseball umpire and returned to Montreal in 1987, where I was recruited to head up a small mom-and-pop security company. During my five years with the firm, I increased revenues more than six-fold and over the course of this period, I also identified a gap in the market for security services: this was a fragmented industry, ripe for consolidation. So, I ventured out on my own and founded Trans-Quebec Group in 1995 with $25,000 I raised by taking a second mortgage on my house. A few years later, we were making $40M in revenue.

My vision was to build a full-service, multi-disciplinary security company. I knew this would require a mix of aggressive organic growth and strategic acquisitions. After going public in 1999 to raise capital, we acquired Garda Security Group, among other key acquisitions, to deepen our expertise and rebranded as Garda, to eventually become GardaWorld.

One defining aspect of our DNA over the years is that competition has never intimidated us. Instead, we’ve thrived on it, keeping a close eye on rivals and strategically acquiring either stronger players or those with unrealized market potential, to fit our growth strategy. This approach allowed us to break into new markets and offer more services to an ever-expanding client base. Most of the companies we’ve acquired were not even for sale, but we operate with the view that you’re either looking at the menu, or you’re on it.

During the 2008-2009 financial crisis, our shares plummeted from $17 to 57￠. It was tough and what I told my team then became ingrained within our recipe for success: “Let’s stop focusing on what’s impossible and start focusing on what is.” Our priority was to survive the crisis and emerge stronger. So, we streamlined operations, chose key markets, and discarded underperforming segments. Our all-out turnaround strategy paid off, and to the astonishment of naysayers, we rose like a phoenix from the ashes. Over the next decade, we took the company private in partnership with Apax Partners, and then expanded GardaWorld into the US, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. ?

It was around 2020 that we began to truly deliver on the vision that was started decades prior, to consolidate a multidisciplinary service offering across all aspects of security and began to build businesses that were designed to dominate in their respective specialty areas of security with enviable margins and growth trajectories. Businesses that we call Global Champions (www.gardaworld.com):

GardaWorld Security - Continuously raising industry standards and delivering expectations where our competitors are failing, GardaWorld Security is our traditional security professionals business, disrupting conventions and gaining clear market leadership with a long runway of profitable growth and market share gain. This is especially true in the US market, where we have seen significant growth and the opportunity to accelerate wallet share gains from competitors.?

Crisis24 - A global, AI-enhanced platform for travel risk management, mass communications, critical event management, crisis-security consulting, and personal protection solutions including our leading global medical concierge practice, Crisis24 allows prominent organizations, disruptive brands and influential people to operate with confidence in an uncertain world. With a uniquely integrated and scalable platform, Crisis24 has an unrivaled financial profile that allows it to invest more in technology than any competitor.? ?

ECAMSECURE – The integration of advanced AI technology and expert human resources serves as the foundation for uncompromising remote and virtual surveillance. We simplify the process of mastering complex security challenges through a comprehensive approach – creating solutions that leverage machine learning, hardware and human supervision to prevent and deter rather than react and recover.? ?

Sesami - A business intelligence platform that includes software, devices and managed services, Sesami helps the leading financial institutions and consumer businesses address the rising costs of cash management. With 390,000 intelligent devices installed globally, Sesami sets the standard in intelligent cash management services with 9 of the 10 top global retailers, all of the 10 largest North American banks and 3 of the 5 largest European banks trusting Sesami. Tapping into an underpenetrated market with decades of growth ahead of it, Sesami has a highly recurring and low capex subscription model which naturally increases margins and cashflow conversion over time.?

Over the past few decades, we’ve come a long way, turning GardaWorld into a multibillion-dollar multinational corporation with a footprint spanning 50 countries, 132,000 employees, 35,000 clients, and 500+ locations. Even though we’ve grown, we’ve remained acutely aware of how getting too big and too consolidated can cause you to lose touch with what’s happening in your business or become slower, duller, and more complacent.

Throughout the years, we have always deliberately remained true to our entrepreneurial-driven mindset and our ownership culture. While we have over a dozen businesses now under GardaWorld, along with our four Global Champions, all operate under an owner-operator model, giving true ownership to those businesses to forge their own growth path within the GardaWorld ecosystem of global reach, strength, and stability.

Our entrepreneurial spirit – ambition, agility, and drive – is the essence of who we are and sits at the core of our customer focus. Our business has grown by delivering more for our clients and becoming a trusted partner. That trust is critical to our future success. That trust was built because we seek to own our destiny at all costs.

And that relentless drive to own our destiny has now come full circle with our recent announcement that GardaWorld’s management team are now majority owners with a 70% stake in the corporation, alongside HPS Partners, OneIM and Oak Hill.

GardaWorld’s journey is far from complete. We plan to continue to capitalize on organic and acquisitive growth opportunities, expand into new industries and markets, and seek improvements that translate to a seamless client experience. Careful investment has built a solid, durable foundation for each of our businesses, ensuring our ability to deliver the future services clients need in new markets.?

I have immense and deep gratitude to our departing financial partners who have supported us through thick and thin over the years: Toronto Stock Exchange, Apax Partners, Rh?ne Group, BC Partners. Their involvement has helped realize our vision and materialize our journey to redefining the security industry.

Lastly, I am mostly grateful for our people. There is no team with sharper instincts or greater drive to deliver wins than those who form GardaWorld. No matter where we are, our entrepreneurial spirit is in everything we do; it is the essence of who we are and the core of our client focus. This spirit is brought to life by some of the hardest workers in the industry and I extend my thanks and gratitude to all GardaWorld employees across the globe. Every day, they make the world a safer place for our clients, protecting their people, assets and operations.? ?

This has always been a winning team, and we plan to keep on winning! #truealignment