G4S Shares Drop by $282 Million After Reports Omar Mateen Was an Employee
News that a G4S employee was the gunman who killed 50 people at a packed gay nightclub in Florida wiped almost $282.80 million off the value of the world’s largest security firm.
Omar Mateen,
29, a Florida resident and U.S. citizen, had undergone company
screening as recently as 2013 with “no findings,” his
Britain-headquartered employer G4S said on Sunday.
G4S
recently announced that it was winding down its operations in Israel
and the occupied West Bank. It insisted that the move was due to
financial issues and denied that the move was related to its being
targeted by anti-Israel campaigners.
Some pro-Israel organizations responded by threatening to scrap contracts with G4S if it did not stay in the Jewish state.
When trading opened in London on Monday, shares in G4S lost 6.6 percent to 175 pence to hit their lowest level since 2009.
An analyst who declined to be named said the incident could cause more damage to G4S after a long line of issues.
“It doesn’t help having their name in the press against something like that,” the analyst said.
Mateen
was employed at a gated retirement community in South Florida. He
underwent two instances of company screening and background checks -
once when he was hired in 2007, and again in 2013. At that time, the
company learned that Mateen had been questioned by the FBI but that the
inquiries were then closed.
G4S
has a checkered recent history after it failed to provide enough guards
for the London Olympics in 2012, was then involved in a tagging fiasco
the following year, and earlier this year took a 65 million pound charge
on loss-making British government contracts.
For more stories, go to www.forward.com. Sign up for the Forward’s daily newsletter at http://forward.com/newsletter/signup/
Commenti
Posta un commento