For pay. For the RIGHT pay.
Why sign up for the military when you can
make 4X the money in the "private sector"
Here is the latest profile of a man whose firm stands rake in
$1.4 bn
next year alone --
from the increased militarization of the world.
Fighting for the liberty to make profits the "old fashioned"
gunboat diplomacy way.
What a high price we all pay.
Stéphan Crétier, once a guard at The Bay,
now heads one the world's largest security firms
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/226457
This story ran under the Headline
Securing a niche among Quebec's business elite
Jun 18, 2007 04:30 AM
Sean Gordon
Quebec Bureau Chief
MONTREAL–It's
the fantasy of every workaday stiff and wage slave: get rich enough to
buy the company and take over the boss's chair.
And last year, Montreal businessman Stéphan Crétier lived it.
When
the senior moneymen at Garda World Security Corp. picked through
Crétier's request to acquire Sec-Pro, a Quebec security outfit where
Crétier got his start, they didn't immediately like what they saw in
the balance sheet.
"I told them, `Boys, you don't get it. This
one isn't about the money,'" Crétier said last week at Garda's annual
general meeting.
The hard-driving Crétier, who is CEO and
chairman of Garda, is a man in a hurry. And at 43, he sits atop one of
the country's fastest-growing companies, and is carving his place in
Quebec's business elite.
The company he presides over, which
expects to rake in $1.4 billion in revenues next year, started with
four employees and a cramped, ramshackle office in 1996.
But for
all his rapidly mounting wealth and eye-popping financial performance,
there is also a whiff of controversy surrounding Crétier and the
business he built from the ground up.
Last month, four
British-based Garda employees were abducted in Baghdad. As one of the
few Canadian companies active in Iraq, Garda finds itself lumped in
with private security contractors whose role in the invasion and
repelling the insurgency has been criticized by human rights groups.
These contractors aren't forced to play by the same rules as uniformed
military, and they have a propensity to hire mercenary soldiers.
Though Crétier said the kidnappings have been trying for the company, he is unapologetic about Garda's role in the country.
"Much
has been made about the private security companies working in that
environment, but less talked about are the humanitarian and aid
organizations, who form the bulk of our clientele. I think we have a
very important role to play," he said. "I sleep very well at night."
Meeting
with reporters after Garda's annual meeting, Crétier was also quick to
differentiate his company's operations in Iraq from those of highly
controversial operations like Blackwater USA, a "professional military"
firm with close ties to the White House.
"We're nothing like
Blackwater. They are completely different ... they are clearly
identified as a para-military organization, which is not the case with
us," said Crétier, whose company has 1,500 people working in Iraq. (and what, pray tell is the difference ... standing guard for colonialists is NOT mercenary work ..?
Most
are in the autonomous Kurdish region in the country's north, but there
are also 300 employees whose main job is to guard the British embassy
in Baghdad – workers inherited when Garda acquired a London-based
security company two years ago.
Crétier travelled to Iraq
recently to survey his company's operations – "you can fly there
commercially; did you know that?" he joked with reporters – and came
away with the impression that vast areas of the country are quite
stable.
Asked if the abductions would change his mind about
staying in the country, Crétier was categorical. "Absolutely not.
Unfortunately, this is part of our mandate, those are the risks
associated with being active in these regions. I have more employees
who have been shot in North America than anywhere else in the world,"
he said, adding that the company plans to expand its operations in
war-torn regions like Darfur.
Currently, only about 10 per cent
of Garda's business – roughly $150 million – comes from "high-risk"
environments, although Crétier freely acknowledges the work is highly
profitable.
Crétier grew up in Montreal, working briefly as a security guard at The Bay to pay his way through school.
He
moved to Florida after university with designs on studying for an MBA
and becoming a professional baseball umpire. When his umpiring career
didn't pan out, Crétier moved back to Canada and went into management
at Sec-Pro.
He left in the mid-1990s, taking out a $20,000 second
mortgage on his house to found Trans-Quebec Security, which by 2000 had
morphed into Garda. Since then, Crétier's prodigious energies – he is a
fighting-trim workout fanatic – have mostly been turned to making Garda
into a global player.
And Crétier, an unabashed free-marketer who
sits on the board of the right-leaning Montreal Economic Institute, has
used his shrewd business acumen and deal-making abilities to rapidly
acquire 11 companies – making Garda the second-largest armoured car
company in North America, and one of the five largest security
companies in the world.
Technorati Tags: mercenaries, Garda World Security, Stephan Cretier, Iraq
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