GardaWorld
Who They Are
A Montreal security group that buys companies to build what it calls global champions and folds them into its own businesses, so a searcher's conversation is about the platform its company will join.
In the company's own words, GardaWorld is an entrepreneurial-driven corporation that builds global champions in security services, AI-enabled security technologies, integrated risk management and cash automation solutions, with a workforce of more than 132,000. Stephan Crétier founded it in 1995 as Trans-Quebec Security with $25,000 drawn from a second mortgage on his home, and leads it as chairman, president and chief executive. In 2025 he and senior management took majority ownership in a buyout that valued it at C$14 billion.
Its own history says it grew organically and through strategic M&A, and it lists the purchases year by year, from Garda Security Group in Eastern Canada to Whelan Security and ECAMSECURE in the United States. It said buying Stealth would establish a global leader in AI-powered remote video monitoring, building on its ECAMSECURE platform. Its founder said he looked forward to teaming up with Stealth's experts and operators, who share its entrepreneurial, growth-oriented mindset. In 2025 it combined the two as ECAM under one brand, so a seller should expect its name to give way.
Search-Fund Companies They Bought
- Stealth Monitoring · 2024
Rob Cherun and his partner Erik Mikkelsen led Stealth Monitoring, which Cherun's own firm calls search fund-acquired. The firm says he ran it as chief executive for twelve years, for a net multiple of more than twenty times. In 2019 the investment firm Twin Point Capital made a significant equity investment, with the searchers' fund, Auxo Management, keeping a substantial stake. In 2021 Stealth merged with Eyewitness Surveillance, and the release named Twin Point, LLR Partners and Auxo as its owners. GardaWorld completed its purchase on October 31, 2024, and neither of its releases names a seller; the agreement release quotes Mikkelsen as president. [1][2][3][4][5]