Dawn Calleja, Report on Business magazine editor.Daniel Ehrenworth/The Globe and Mail
GardaWorld is one of the biggest players in private security. Chances are you cross paths with its employees on a near-daily basis — a security guard on patrol at your local mall, perhaps, or a team picking up cash from the bank in an armoured truck. The Montreal-based outfit also provides security in some of the world’s most dangerous nations, including Haiti, Iraq and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is in the grips of a brutal civil war and where Garda has no fewer than six offices.
The company was founded in 1995 by Stephan Crétier, a one-time baseball umpire who sold his car and took out a second mortgage to scrape together $25,000. Report on Business magazine first profiled him in 2006, when the company had revenue of $260 million. Within a year, that had more than doubled, and not just because of Crétier’s voracious appetite for acquisitions. As Konrad Yakabuski wrote: “It’s hard to think of any industry with better prospects for growth than private security. ...Since 9/11, the security business has been growing by double digits annually.”
Today, that market is worth close to US$250 billion globally, and Garda now has a valuation of $14 billion.
That prosperity gap—chasm, really—is bound to widen even further in the U.S. under Donald Trump and his merry band of steal-from-the-poor-give-to-the-rich miscreants
One of its fast-growing segments is executive protection, particularly in the aftermath of the assassination of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, America’s largest health insurer, in midtown Manhattan in December. It’s safe to say executives were shaken. As you’ll read in “Clear and present danger”, Crétier says interest in GardaWorld’s Crisis24 protection services spiked.
And the danger shows no signs of abating. Part of it is due to the income gap. People are struggling even as corporate profits keep going up and up and up. Given the evidence so far, that likely played a role in the Thompson murder. UnitedHealthcare posted a profit of US$15.6 billion last year on US$300 billion in revenue. Meanwhile, the average American had US$18,660 in medical debt in 2021, up 50% from 2017. (The company is now being investigated by the Department of Justice for civil fraud related to certain billing practices.)
That prosperity gap — chasm, really — is bound to widen even further in the U.S. under Donald Trump and his merry band of steal-from-the-poor-give-to-the-rich miscreants. They’re not content to simply pillage their own country for profit, either; they’re also seemingly bent on destabilizing the entire world.
But for the few who can afford it, help is at hand. To find out what clients can expect from Garda’s top-of-the-line private security — where a team of sentries will not only have your back, but your medication and your perfectly prepared latte, too — we sent Sarah Treleaven to Charles Town, West Virginia, about an hour’s drive from Washington, D.C., to get the VIP treatment. Getting her there was complicated by an epic snowstorm and a crash at Pearson, and involved countless booked, cancelled, rebooked and cancelled-again flights, plus one very long drive from Montreal. But it was worth it.
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