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Recently CEO Steve Jones spoke with CEOCFO Magazine about merger particulars. Following is an excerpt. To view the full Q & A, click here.
CEOCFO: Mr. Jones, it has been about two years since we have spoken. Would you tell us a bit about the merger?
Mr. Jones: It has been an exciting and eventful two years. We made several acquisitions during that time while continuing to grow our business organically. In May of 2016, we topped off that momentum by putting together a merger with AlliedBarton Security Services, a strategy the former CEO of AlliedBarton and I had been discussing for several years. We thought there was a tremendous amount of industrial logic for bringing the two companies together. It was a great fit from a service delivery and offerings standpoint. The two companies mirrored each other in many ways yet each brought a unique approach to the business. AlliedBarton brought a mature financial practice with their SOX compliance and other processes while Universal brought a whole new technology component to the equation. The merger was finalized August 1, 2016, and the company now stands at about $5.1 billion in revenue and is the largest security services provider in North America. I believe the new organization is now poised to seamlessly integrate new acquisitions into the portfolio and realize synergies and expanded capabilities for faster ROI.
CEOCFO: How did you work through some of the challenges in merging two companies?
Mr. Jones: I would say any merger of this size is challenging. We had two CEOs who had been running their respective businesses for a long time. We had to work through two different corporate cultures and approaches to the business to determine where the specific functions would best be situated for efficiency and success. We had to make key leadership decisions from the CEO on down. The financial aspects of the deal and the industrial synergies were pretty black and white. You can look at it on paper and say this deal made a tremendous amount of sense. We believe that we can deliver a wider service offering in an expanded footprint with an incredibly robust back office to support not only the new Allied Universal but the new business expansion efforts we expect to continue.
CEOCFO: Would you give us an idea of a typical solution you provide as well as something more customized?
Mr. Jones: Our typical solution provides security professional services to corporate America whether it is a manufacturing facility, high rise office complex, hospital, college campus, retail mall or residential community. This solution consists of the men and women who patrol these facilities and control the entrances—ingress and egress on an everyday basis. We offer manned guarding and lobby ambassador services all the way up to operating a company’s entire security function including armed patrol and high security clearance services. We are excited to integrate our security professional services with the latest technology to bring our clients even greater visibility and control of their facilities. Whether it’s our CyCop app that our security professionals use while on patrol to provide clients with real-time data about their property to around-the-clock remote monitoring and surveillance at our Global Security Operations Center (GSOC), we offer many solutions. For instance, our managed and hosted access control, remote video monitoring and real-time video analytics provide clients with enhanced intelligence and situational awareness through our Monitoring and Response Center. We also offer state-of-the-art robots to act as force multipliers and take on routine surveillance tasks.
About the Author
Steve Jones is CEO of Allied Universal.
