In the middle of the Olympics it is easy to
forget the travails of this, once so admired company, but as its troubles are
linked to the Olympics, we are reminded every day of G4S’s shortcomings. The UK
is awash with G4S jokes, how many G4S employees does it take to change a light bulb
etc. The company has become the butt of all jokes, but then it gets worse:
I heard a story (which I believe to be true
as the source would know) about one of the recent tasks G4S was undertaking on
behalf of the government in connection with Olympic security – the company was
tasked with doing a security check of a hotel that was being used by delegates
and had promised to deliver 60 staff to carry out this task.
ONE staff member from G4S turned up for
this job! The police were duly called they turned up accompanied by police dogs
to sniff out explosives and drugs. No explosives were found, but now it gets interesting
– the only drugs that were found by the sniffer dogs – wait for it – were in
the G4S van as the one member of staff they had sent had some in the van.
Allegedly he had also been enjoying a spliff, maybe to calm his nerves before
explaining that he was the only one coming and thus they were 59 staff short –
who knows? Actually – the sniffer dogs are trained to sit, once they smell
drugs and the dog only sat next to the G4S guy, who was subsequently searched
(including the van) and arrested.
You just couldn’t make it up – Jørgen
Philip Sørensen the founder of G4S who passed away a couple of years ago would
surely be turning in his grave if he knew of this catastrophic disaster – how
can any government, or business ever appoint them to do anything ever again?
The stock has corrected form a recent high
of 290p down to the mid-240’s, but still has a market cap of £3.5 billion.
Interestingly, accordingly to Bloomberg they also employ 639,904 people as of
the beginning of the year, but clearly they are not very good at managing their
staff, nor meeting the demands of clients….!
Still a sell I wonder?
