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07.01.02
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| Group 4 Falck Industry Areas: Mostly security and security related services.Security: guarding, alarm and cash services. Safety: ambulance, rescue (incl. Auto assistance), fire services, patient transport, psychological crisis therapy, personal care alarms and risk management. ‘Global solutions’: includes prison and court services, meter-reading services, immigration services, education, prison transport and other outsourced services[1]. Overview Market share/importance Group 4 Falck is the world’s second-largest provider of security services (number one is Securitas www.securitasgroup.com). The company has 125,000 employees in more than 50 countries[2]. History[3] Group 4 Falck is better known in the UK as Group 4, a name which it has come to be associated with incompetence and greed. Group 4 Falck was created in 2000 by the merger of Group 4 Securitas (International) B.V. and Falck A/S. The companies both started off in the beginning of last century in Denmark, when Philip Sørensen and Marius Hogrefe founded the guarding company ‘København Fredriksberg Nattevagt’(1901), and Sophus Falck established ‘Redningskorpet for København og Fredriksberg A/S’ (1906). Redningskorpet for København og Fredriksberg A/S, which later changed its name to Falck, started off providing guarding, ambulance and fire engine services. In 1988 the Falck family sold the company to Baltica, a Danish insurance company, that went on to sell of 55% of Falck to a number of other major insurance companies. During the 90s Falck expanded in Europe by acquiring several companies (Patena Security in Sweden, Falken in Norway, SIMIS in Germany, Sezam Sp. z o.o. of Poland, AS ESS, a security operator with companies in all Baltic states, and Nederlandse Veiligheidsdienst (NVD), the largest security operator in the Netherlands). In 1950 the Sørensen family established itself in the UK. At this time, all its companies were managed under the name ‘Securitas International’. In 1963, Store Detectives Ltd and Securitas Alarms Ltd, were set up by the family in the UK. Jørgen Philip Sørensen was appointed managing director of the UK part of the group in 1965. The UK part of the business was organised under the name Group 4 from 1968 onwards. In 1981 the activities of the Sørensen family were split up into Securitas AB (the Swedish activities) and the Group 4 group (the rest of the European activities). Group 4 moved on to expand to several countries all over the world (India, United Arab Emirates, Ukraine, Turkey, etc). In 1990 the group acquired American Magnetics Corporation which specialises in access control systems. This helped Group 4 Falck to win the highly prestigious contract to handle security at the Pentagon[4]. Group 4 has been one of the benefactors of the UK privatisation policy during the 90s. In 1991, it got the first contract to manage the UK’s first privatised prison, Wolds in Humberside. British Gas started a joint venture with Group 4 to provide meter reading to more than 19 million customers (they work together under the name Accuread). After the merger of Group 4 and Falck in 2000, the expansion continued with several acquisitions (ADS (Germany), SOS (Austria), SPAC (Finland), BOS (Czech Republic), Unikey (Norway) and Banktech (Hungary)). The year 2001 started of well for Group 4 Falck with increasing turnover and profits. This was thanks to the growth in the markets in Indonesia, Kazakhstan and the republics in Central Asia (especially in the oil and gas sector)[5].
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| Footnotes [1] Group 4 Falck, Annual Report 2000, p. 22-25 [2] Ibid. [3] All information on History from the Group 4 Falck website, viewed 10/10/01, www.group4falck.com/object.php?obj=obj3b000c [4] Group 4 wins Pentagon contract, Richard Norton-Taylor, 29 September 1999 [5] www.securitypark.co.uk, viewed 26 November 2001. |
