Failure of G4S Security Company in Olympic 2012 - Assignment Example

Business Table of Contents Executive Summary 3 Introduction 4 G4S Security Company 5 Strategic decisions 5 Evaluation of Strategic decision 6 Failureof G4S Security Company in Olympic 2012 9 Evaluation of financial statement 13 Learning Outcome 5 and 6 16 Limitation of financial statements 16 Recommendation 17 Conclusion 17 Reference List 18 Executive Summary G4S is regarded as the largest security company in world with regard to revenue and has operation in more than 150 countries. Though it is the most prestigious security company in the world when it signed the contract of $355 million for providing security services at the London Olympics many were perplexed with the news (G4S, 2014b). Their reaction was justified by the series of controversies they had encountered since 2010. The security group signed the contract to provide 13,000 staff members for assisting London to cope up with the huge number of visitors by providing large scale private security (G4S, 2014b). The main reason behind the failure of the contract between Olympic committee and G4S was the staffing problem of the company. G4S could not maintain the terms if the contract and thus the contract cost them a huge amount. Introduction G4S, the largest international security solutions group, specialises in providing security solutions to those countries where risk of safety and security are conceived as a serious strategic threat. The company has provided successful security solutions to many countries but after the death of Jimmy Mubenga in 2010, it had started to face its darkest days. Several controversies followed the death and later in 2012 the security disaster at Olympic Games provided a severe blow to the company’s strategic actions and the company had to pay a huge amount as penalty (Taylor, 2012). If the issue is looked upon very closely, it can be observed that the company had undertaken many wrong policies for taking the contract of providing security solutions to Olympic Games. It overvalued the number of security personnel and also increased the pay of the chief executives when the company was encountering huge loss. All the issues led to the failure of the contract with the Olympic committee. However, the company has to pay an amount of £ 88 million as penalty. The report highlights the facts that lead to the failure of the security contract of G4S with Olympic Games in 2012 (Shift Media Publication, 2013). The main issue was staffing problem and the company shares were also falling as the investors came to know about the issue. If the financial statements of the company are studied it can be noticed that the Annual Report 2012 does not have any transaction information regarding Olympic 2012. The financial statements do not have information regarding the transaction pertaining to Olympic Games. The only existence of the incident is written in small letter in the Performance Highlights section of the annual report (G4S, 2014b). G4S Security Company G4S Plc, a British multinational security provider, is headquartered in Crawley, United Kingdom. It is regarded as the largest security provider in the world with respect to operations and revenue. It is observed that the company has its operation in 150 countries and has plans for extending its boundary (Hill, 2013). The company is recognised to be third largest employer in the world which employs 620,000 employees from many countries around the world. The company is registered in the London Stock Exchange and is an element of FTSE 100 Index (Hopkins, 2012).  The information that are obtained from the annual reports and website of the company points out to the fact that the company has not flashed out the incident that took place in 2012 after it was charged a penalty of £88 million from the Olympic Games authority. The loss that was encountered by the company was nowhere in the annual report’ financial statements. Instead the company disclosed other information which was less important than that of Olympic contract failure. Strategic decisions During 2013, the company disclosed that the group had the opportunity for enhancing the quality of the presentation results by disclosing the business performances separately. The separate disclosure is identified for the restructuring of the business and also for other special items (Wearden, 2012). The wide opportunities that are observed in the developed and emerging markets reflected in the financial results. However, it totally avoided the results of the financial losses due to the failure of the Olympic Games contract of providing security services. The annual report disclosed that the group had earned revenue of 5.8% in 2012 but it was seen that there was also of £88 million (BBC, 2014). The company did not showed it in the financial statements and but had just mentioned the loss as the exceptional items in the Performance Highlights section of the annual report (BBC, 2014). The company even highlighted that the market had grown by 16% and the company had earned 37% of the total revenue of the group and 44% of the group’s PBITDA (Lawless, 2013). In the third quarter the company had shown that it had accelerated restructuring of the businesses that had resulted in investing restructuring charge of £68 million (Lawless, 2013). The restructuring helped in improving the competitiveness of the market related to that business which had brought enough profit to the company and the payback period ranges from 12-36 months (Lawless, 2013). Evaluation of Strategic decision The overall strategic report of G4S was accepted by G4S Board since it has utilised the strength of the company. The company has its operation in six continents and employs 618,000 employees. The main strategy of G4S focuses on the market ked concept. The needs of the customer are understood and strategic objectives are framed in order to satisfy them. The company has provided its customers with innovative solutions which have also supported its goal (G4S, 2014a). Figure 1: Strategic Review of G4S (Source: G4S, 2014a) From the above figure it is evident that the company focuses on its customer needs. The customers belong to a number of industries and also to the government. It provides with a wide range of services which satisfy the requirements of the customers. It meets the need for security across the globe. The company utilises best technology for rendering security services to its customers. The company provides security personnel to wide range of industries along with small customers like the home, office and many more (BBC, 2014a). The strategies undertaken by the company to meet up the needs of the Olympic Games, 2012 were a failure even after its popular security system and personnel. The strategic failure led to disaster for the company. The following paragraph explains the strategies undertaken by the company to meet the requirements of the contract and also the loopholes which led to the failure of the contract with Olympic Games, 2012. Many audit companies noted that the deficiency of management of G4S to communicate appropriately was the main weakness of strategies that are undertaken by the company. G4S could not communicate its requirement from the personnel and as a result they were not able to perform the right way even before the main event took place. The lack of training as well as understanding led to the massive destruction of the company image (Secretary of State for the Home Department, 2012). The strategy of G4S included the appointment of the security personnel. The company had received huge application for the post of security personnel in the company. There were applicants who only passed initial interview but were never called for the training sessions. Training courses were not allocated for them as a result they could not understand the initial requirement of the company from them and thus their bad performance led to the breach of contract. The company did not recruit the applicants with proper appointment letter or any contract (Secretary of State for the Home Department, 2012). Thus, when time came the company dropped few of them with any prior notice and explanation which indicated that the company took illegal steps to cover their mistakes. Few candidates were trained properly were dropped without any explanation. The candidates, who were trained, did not get reimbursement of any expense which they made during the training period. It forced many candidates to leave training program in the middle and went for other opportunities. Few applicants were assigned those locations where they could not reach because of the lack of any transportation and they were not provided with accommodation. The candidates who passed the training programs were provided with the pass and uniform but they were not assigned with duties before the start of the Games, 2012 (Secretary of State for the Home Department, 2012). All the above issue clearly indicated the lack of proper communication with the applicants and the company itself. The applicants even did not get any clear response from the management and thus they were disappointed regarding the behaviour of the management. The officials of London Organising Committee of the Olympic (LOCOG) were worried regarding the situation and they were ready to give advice and support to G4S for correcting the situation. LOCOG decided to rectify the communication between G4s and its staff members by assigning their best recruiting volunteers for the Games Makers (Secretary of State for the Home Department, 2012). The attrition rate of the company is also an indicator of the poor management of the company. The new applicants were not satisfied or even happy with the procedure of the management and thus they left the company for better opportunities. The attrition rate was such that it surpassed all the records of the industry and those who were successfully during the interviews also left the company since they were not satisfied with the policies and work structure of the company (Secretary of State for the Home Department, 2012). The poor communication of the company with its staff was the main contributory factor for the failure of the contract with LOCOG. It had also affected the moral of those who had gone through the interview successfully but were not selected for the training and at last they were forced to leave the company without any particular explanation (Secretary of State for the Home Department, 2013). It is crystal clear that the situation worsened to such an extent that it was under the moral obligation of the company to make payments to those applicants who passed the interview and training but were not allocated their duties in process of operation. The payment indicated apologising for the situation (Secretary of State for the Home Department, 2013). Failure of G4S Security Company in Olympic 2012 G4S had encountered a series of scandals in the last few years of operation from 2010. There had been serious concerns pertaining to the training of the G4S employees. The scandals were such that even the biggest critics of the company were surprised at its operation. However, the largest scandal in the history of G4S had enveloped it just before the Olympic event had started. Few time before the opening ceremony, the company declared it could not provide the promised number of staffs and the total requirement (1300) is falling short by 3,500 personnel. The news channels reported that the staffs who had accepted offers of working with G4S did not get proper contract from the company. It was observed that many if he security personnel did not turned up for their shifts (Telegraph Media Group Limited, 2014a). To rectify the situation, armed forces were called to fill up the spaces in short notice. It indicated that over 17,000 military personnel were present at the grounds of the Games or at standby during the same. The armed forces were from Afghanistan and they were properly trained and highly skilled. In July, 2012 it was declared that 3,500 armed forces would be arranged for the Games to meet up the shortage of properly trained G4S security personnel. Keith Vaz, a renowned personality of Olympic Games have claimed that “G4S has let the country down and we have literally had to send in the troops" (Byan, 2012). When G4S declared that it had encountered a loss of £50 million its share price had declined by 9%. The result of the decline is due to the fact that the company failed to provide properly trained security personnel for Olympic Games, 2012 (Booth, 2012). On 17 July, 2012, Nick Buckles, Chief executive of G4S confronted Home Affairs Select Committee and apologised for the failure of the contract and regretted that they should not have taken the contract on the first place when they did not have appropriate number of personnel for the event. He even agreed to pay bonuses to the soldiers who were engaged at the last moment to replace the unqualified security personnel. He also claimed that the situation was very much humiliating for the company as they failed to keep the promise they has made during the signing of the contract (Travis, 2012). In Newcastle, 500 security staffs of G4S were replaced from the local security companies when the Olympic scandal came into prominence. In Scotland, the role played by G4S was replaced by Strathclyde Police. Thus, it can be noticed that there were a number of replacement for the G4S company security personnel all over the world due to the failure of the company in providing security services in the Olympic Games, 2012 (Telegraph Media Group Limited, 2014). The event not only shattered the image of the company but it also destroyed the trust and confidence of many companies who used its security services. When the investors got the information that the company had encountered huge loss they were reluctant to invest in the shares of the company and even redeemed the amount that they had invested earlier. This led to the decrease in share price and investment dropped to a great extent (G4S, 2014d). Earlier the Prime Minister of United Kingdom had already declared that if a company fails to deliver the requirements of the contract it has signed, then the company should be penalised with the loss that it has made to the contract party. Thus, the contract failure of G4S has penalised the company to a great extent. They had to pay penalty of a huge amount which brought in loss for the company in 2012 (Blitz, 2012). The big investors of G4s were annoyed and depressed by the actions of the company and they demanded to encounter the management of the company and question them for the failure. They did not demand for the resignations of the top executives instead they wanted to know the exact reason of their failure since they were worried for their big investment they had already made with the company. The past performance of the company had brought them huge profit and that was the reason why they were worried for their investments (BBC, 2012). The company had already warned its investors that it had encountered loss of £35million to £50 million for the breach of the contract (Calleam Consulting Ltd., 2013). The company had justified its failure by saying that it had encountered few issues regarding the processing of the applicants and training them with the proper training procedures. The failure of the training programs led to this situation for the company. The incident had affected the annual revenue of the company since the biggest customer of the company was the British Government (Calleam Consulting Ltd., 2013). After the incident government replaced the G4S security personnel with other security personnel from competitive companies. Major contract of the company used to come from the public sector of the United Kingdom since the company was regarded as the biggest security provider in the world. However, after the incident the situation changed dramatically (Greene, 2012). The services that are provided by the company are guarding the prison to houses of children. Through its successful performance as the vest security service provider the company had also planned for expansion in new areas and had also decide to assist the frontline police. However, the after the incident of the Olympic 2012, the scenario changed and the company had to face a lot of difficulties and even financial loss (Calleam Consulting Ltd., 2013). It was far from recovery since Olympic Games is a big name and every individual in United Kingdom are fond of the event. Therefore, when the company failed to provide appropriate security to the events despite the contract, the trust and confidence collapsed. Evaluation of financial statement Financial statements form an important part of an annual report of a company since it reflects its financial position for a particular period of time expressed in years or weeks. The financial statement consists of the income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement and change in equity. The financial position of the company is evaluated for the period 2010-2012 by considering the income statement and balance sheet. Figure 2: Income statement of G4S (Source: G4S, 2014a) From the above figure it is evident that G4S had shadowed their loss incurred in Olympic Games by dividing the financial information of the company into two parts: Ex-Olympic and Olympic. The financial information of 2012 revealed that the company has over shadowed the losses very cleverly and it had identified that the company has encountered profit at the end of 2012. Moreover, it can be observed that the profit of the company in 2012 has declined from that of 2011. This is mainly due to the loss encountered by company for the failure of the contract. Figure 3: Balance sheet of G4S (Source: G4S, 2014a) From the above figure it is evident that net asset of G4S has decreased in 2012 from 2011 this ascertains the fact that company has to deploy its assets for covering its loss that has occurred due to the contract failure. The total liabilities are observed to increase to a great since the company has to pay the penalties by taking loans from the financial institutions. However, it is also identified that the total equity of the company has decreased in 2012 since the investors have ceased to invest after the news of breach of contract was declared by LOCOG. Learning Outcome 5 and 6 Shareholders’ wealth is referred to the shareholder’s value that relates to value of the organisation which is explained in terms of stock. However, profit maximization refers to the amount of profit that the organisation makes during the course of operation. When a shareholder looks at the profit of the organisation it gets the idea of the financial condition which will help him/her to identify whether the investment will benefit him/her. The investors focus on the profit value since they want to maximise their wealth by investing in the organisation (Porter, 2011). The stakeholders expect whenever a profit is earned the organisation, the dividend payout will increase. However, in case of G4S, things did not go that way since the company has been encountering because of the contract of Olympic. The investors found it difficult to make any investment decision as the company has to encounter a huge loss. The loss affected the shareholders and they lost their wealth with the organisation (Harrison, 2008). The relevance to the long term investment decision rests on the fact how the organisation can achieve its goal. The decision regarding investment of an organisation can be evaluated through accounting rate of return, payback period and net present value (Harrison, 2008). However, in this case these cannot be calculated since the contract failed and the loss was encountered. Thus, G4S did not have enough cash or cash equivalent to use them as source of fund for other investments. Limitation of financial statements The financial statement of G4S has reflected the loss of the company way by creating two divisions for the year 2012: Ex-Olympic and Olympic. The main purpose of the division it is overshadow the financial loss which occurred due to the breach of contract with Olympic, 2012. This limitation of the financial statement is actually a fraud on the part of the company since annual reports are studied by the investors for making any investment in the company. The profit at the end of 2012 will indicate that the company is appropriate for investment though it has encountered a loss of £88 million due to the breach of contract (G4S, 2014c). Recommendation G4S is regarded as the best security service provider in the world. The reputation of the company however did not survive for long since it had encountered a number of scandals which shattered their brand image. It is recommended that the company could have ensured proper recruitment procedure to recruit new security personnel. The training and development program is essential for every new trainee since he has to get acquainted with the company policies and the procedure of work. Training is very important in this industry since security is vital for every company. G4S should improve its liquidity position by ensuring that more cash and cash equivalents are readily available when required. The loss of £88 million should be met in order to check the profitability of the company. Conclusion It can be concluded that the failure of G4S in providing security services to Olympic Games, 2012 has led to the decline of profit and share prices of the company. The liquidity position of the company is observed to be stable however; the company is not earning any profit in 2012 because of the failure of the contract. Reference List BBC, 2012. G4S Reveals Loss On Olympic Security Failures. [online] Available at: < http://www.bbc.com/news/business-19395101 > [Accessed 22 April 2014]. BBC, 2014. London 2012: G4S Olympics Statement In Full London 2012: G4S Olympics Statement In Full. [online] Available at: < http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-18839178 > [Accessed 22 April 2014]. BBC, 2014a. London 2012: G4Ss Nick Buckles Regrets Taking Contract. [online] Available at: < http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-18866153 > [Accessed 22 April 2014]. Blitz, R., 2012. G4S Admits Responsibility For Guards Crisis. 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