G4S Global Security

[Caz]

The following document lists approximately 760 companies across the globe which are subsidiaries of G4S. (Lord Paul Leslie Condon, a director, is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts - John Adam St Gang).

http://www.scribd.com/doc/66695980/G4S-Global-Security-Subsidiaries

[TonyGosling]

ALEX BRUMMER: Lock-down for scrutiny at G4S
By Alex Brummer - Daily Mail - PUBLISHED: 22:15, 8 June 2012
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/news/article-2156579/ALEX-BRUMMER-Loc k-scrutiny-G4S.html

Few public companies find themselves as much in the public eye as the security firm G4S, which modestly describes itself as providing ‘secure solutions’ and ‘cash solutions’.

In fact what G4S does is try and keep people safe from wrongdoers and manages privately-run prisons in the United Kingdom and around the world.

This is important but controversial work that not surprisingly attracts the close attention of civil rights lawyers and human rights activists.

Given the size of the group – last year it generated before tax profits of £306million on turnover of £7.5billion – and the scale of operations it occasionally makes errors that garner unwanted publicity.

But the good thing about quoted enterprises is that once a year the directors are required to face their owners in a public forum. Many companies make a virtue of this.

Down the decades, the annual general meeting of Marks & Spencer has become an occasion at which female investors have the chance to unburden themselves to the company about the deteriorating quality of the elastic in under-garments.

It is left to the bigger battalion investors to worry about the size of the golden hellos and goodbyes to arriving and departing directors.

Despite being a FTSE100 company, the just-retired chairman of G4S Alf Duch-Pedersen and his chief executive Nick Buckles appear to think that exchanges between investors and the company are a private matter.

This week the company took the unprecedented step of ringing up financial reporters to inform them that they would be excluded from the annual meeting. As a result, investors and other stakeholders who could not attend in person were deprived of independent information as to what occurred behind the closed doors.

Moreover, the voting information on pay and other resolutions released on the day was incomplete and therefore misleading. The full count was not provided to the stock exchange until the following day.

Gatekeeping of this kind may come naturally to a security firm but does nothing to build public trust. In G4S’s case, relations with investors already are strained because of a botched £5.2billion takeover attempt of a Danish services company.

Bigger figures than G4S’s chief executive Buckles have been forced out of their jobs for less. If G4S wants to be taken seriously as a public company it needs to stop acting as if it were MI6.

All of the company’s affairs from directors’ pay, to failed bids and alleged human rights violations against prisoners need to be publicly aired. If Nick Buckles and his cohorts don’t like it, they should get out of the public arena.

[fish5133]

They are recruiting school teachers amongst others from the general public to act as security guards during the games. Why when there are so many unemployed? Presume its to cut corners on security checks off its employees or are these teachers going to target school kids?