Excellence in Entrepreneurship Awards to see how they’ve fared in the past seven months.
They have quite the updates to tell.
— Peter J. Brennan
Since September, he’s taken his company to a whole new level—last month he won a $5.1 billion bid to buy London-based security behemoth G4S LLC.
When the companies are officially combined later this year, Jones will oversee 750,000 employees—the world’s seventh biggest private employer.
During its battle to acquire G4S, Jones didn’t stay idle, acquiring three other firms that added about $550 million in sales and another 15,000 employees.
“I can firmly say that it’s truly an exciting and important time in the history of Allied Universal,” Jones told the Business Journal. “Over the last six months, we’ve been extremely busy in terms of our acquisition strategy.”
In the past seven months, Jones also had to deal with a resurgence of the coronavirus. Many of his employees guard the hospitals most heavily hit during the pandemic.
On the personnel front, one of his key executives, CFO Andrew Vollero, left in February to take a similar role at hot internet firm Reddit Inc.
Jones hired CFO Tim Brandt, who had worked for 30 years for Deloitte, becoming the managing partner of the Orange County office for the past four years.
Brandt will focus on the upcoming acquisition and integration of G4S.
And to top it off, the company is planning an initial public offering.
“We believe that excellence starts with strong local leadership and local presence,” he said. “Now, we will be able to offer global and local resources to our OC customers in order to keep our people safe so our communities can thrive.”
