The security contractor Securitas will broaden its scope beyond guarding services and electronic security to focus more on fire and safety, as well as corporate risk management, the company’s President and CEO Alf Goransson, pictured, said in the multi-national’s 2015 annual report. He said: “We see strong operational synergies in these areas and are confident that such an expansion will increase the value we can deliver to our customers by optimising their total security and safety spend.” The firm has 330,000 employees in 53 countries.
In October 2015, Securitas agreed to acquire Diebold Electronic Security in North America, making Securitas unique in the US market thanks to its ability to offer complete security solutions to customers, according to Goransson. He said: “This was a major acquisition – in fact, it was the
largest acquisition Securitas has made in 15 years, since we acquired the security company Burns in the US in 2000.”
He added that Securitas achieved organic sales growth of 5 per cent, and the firm estimated that it’s growing faster than the security market in the US and Europe, ‘mainly supported by our strategy of security solutions and technology’. As in previous reports, the firm stressed the move from pure manned guarding to use of technology, which is reshaping the industry. During 2015, Securitas launched the Group Vision 2020 project, detailed in the report. Securitas is organised into three business segments: Security Services North America, Security Services Europe (the largest) and Security Services Ibero-America. Generally speaking, the mainly mature security markets in North America and Europe have moved from growing 1–2 percent faster than GDP to growing at the same pace as GDP. Growth rates in emerging markets in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia still tend to outpace GDP. Growth is generally higher in emerging economies, but volumes and large contracts are still limited to relatively mature markets. It names its main competitors as G4S, Prosegur and Allied Barton.
To read the report visit http://www.securitas.com/en/investors/financial-reports/annual-reports/.
