Loomis Fargo & Company
Encyclopedia
Loomis is an armored car company. The modern company was formed in 1997 by the consolidation of two armored security concerns, Wells Fargo Armored Service and Loomis Armored Inc. It was a division of Securitas AB
from 2001 to 2008, when it was listed
at Nasdaq OMX Stockholm.
firm of Wells Fargo
& Company ceased express service in 1918 upon the organization of American Railway Express
, the company continued to exist, though no longer an operating company in the United States. George C. Taylor of American Express
was president of American Railway Express with Burns D. Caldwell of Wells Fargo as chairman of the board of directors. Davis G. Meller, previously the firm's foreign traffic manager, assumed the presidency of Wells Fargo in 1918.
Elmer Ray Jones, who had been with Wells Fargo since 1893, purchased Wells Fargo & Company's
Express in Mexico and Wells Fargo in Cuba in 1919 for $640,000. He headed a group of men from Wells Fargo and American Express in 1924 to buy Wells Fargo & Company in the United States from the E.H. Harriman estate, making arrangements with the executors, Charles A. Peabody and Robert W. DeForest. The shares were taken by American Express (51 per cent) and the group of individuals headed by Jones (29 per cent); the remaining 20 per cent remained outstanding. In 1924 Jones was elected president of Wells Fargo, which sold its 20,000 shares in the Wells Fargo Nevada National Bank, severing the final tie between the two institutions.
Jones redeveloped Wells Fargo as a concern for armored transportation and other specialized express movements. In 1947, for instance, he personally supervised the transfer of 13 tons of gold
from Montreal
to Mexico City
by airplane. The company had a fleet of 50 armored
cars in New York City
, ten stores handling farm equipment, automobiles and trucks, and (together with American Express) the largest travel agency in Mexico
. It also provided fast railroad freight service through a subsidiary, the Wells Fargo Carloading Corporation.
Succeeding Jones as president of Wells Fargo were Ralph T. Reed in 1956, Howard L. Clark in 1960, R.D. Beals in 1963, and James A. Henderson
in 1964. Wells Fargo continued its overseas express service until the 1960s; by the middle of the decade, its subsidiaries operated armored cars in 12 Eastern and Southern states, and the concern had entered the coin-auditing and coin-rolling business.
As an operator of armored cars, the company did business as the Wells Fargo Armored Security Corporation as an affiliate of Baker Industries, and later, after its acquisition by Borg-Warner Security, as Wells Fargo Armored Service.
. The company's headquarters was moved to Seattle, Washington
, in 1932. Loomis died in 1949, but Loomis Corporation remained under his family's ownership until 1979 when it was acquired by Mayne Nickless. Wingate Partners purchased Loomis in 1991, and the company was consolidated with Wells Fargo Armored Service in 1997 to form Loomis Fargo & Company.
Loomis Fargo in 1999 initiated a strategy for development as an international cash handling service leader. In 2001 it joined Securitas AB
, which was founded in Helsingborg, Sweden, in 1934 by Erik Philip-Sörensen. On November 16, 2006, Securitas AB Chief Executive Officer Hakon Ericson announced the company's intention to split into several independent, specialized security companies, with its Cash Handling Servicea Division adopting the name "Loomis" throughout its international network. By the end of June 2007 the transition to the new identity had been completed, with Loomis employing 20,000 people in a network of 420 operating locations in 11 European nations and the United States. Loomis US included by that date nearly 200 operating locations with 8,000 employees (which it terms "teammates') and a fleet of 3,000 armored cars.
In 2008, Loomis was distributed to the Securitas shareholders and listed
at Nasdaq OMX Stockholm as Loomis AB.
In March 1997, employee Philip N. Johnson
, on his own, stole $18.8 million from the Loomis Fargo armored car that he was driving. In the October 1997 "Loomis Fargo Bank Robbery
", employee David Scott Ghantt and accomplices stole $17.3 million from the Loomis Fargo vault that he was supervising. The perpetrators of both robberies, and a significant majority of the cash, were found by law enforcement agencies.
These two robberies, along with the unrelated $18.9 million Dunbar Armored robbery
, which also occurred in 1997, were the first to surpass the previous holder of the title "largest cash robbery" in U.S. history, the $5 million cash portion (along with $0.9 million in jewellery) of the Lufthansa heist
of December 1978.
in Kent
. The criminals made off with £53m in what is known as the Securitas depot robbery
.
A Securitas van was also rammed by criminals in a stolen tractor who subsequently made off with hundreds of thousands of pounds in Warrington
, Cheshire
.
In March 2006 an armed gang robbed a Securitas van as it was unloading money at Gothenburg's Landvetter Airport in Sweden.
On October 4, 2007, two armored truck guards working for Loomis were killed in a robbery in Northeast Philadelphia. Another man was wounded. A bank surveillance photo showed the gunman walking up to the two guards, shooting both of them execution-style, and running off with a bag containing ATM deposit envelopes. The man later confessed to the killings.
Securitas AB
Securitas AB is a security services , monitoring, consulting and investigation group, based in Stockholm, Sweden. The group has approximately 300,000 employees in 50 countries in North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Securitas AB is listed at Nasdaq OMX Stockholm,...
from 2001 to 2008, when it was listed
Initial public offering
An initial public offering or stock market launch, is the first sale of stock by a private company to the public. It can be used by either small or large companies to raise expansion capital and become publicly traded enterprises...
at Nasdaq OMX Stockholm.
Wells Fargo Armored Service
When the express mailExpress mail
In most postal systems express mail refers to an accelerated delivery service for which the customer pays a surcharge and receives faster delivery. Express mail is a service for domestic mail and is governed by a country's own postal administration...
firm of Wells Fargo
Wells Fargo
Wells Fargo & Company is an American multinational diversified financial services company with operations around the world. Wells Fargo is the fourth largest bank in the U.S. by assets and the largest bank by market capitalization. Wells Fargo is the second largest bank in deposits, home...
& Company ceased express service in 1918 upon the organization of American Railway Express
Railway Express Agency
The Railway Express Agency was a the national monopoly set up by the Untied States federal government in 1917. Rail express services provided small package and parcel transportation using the extant railroad infrastructure much as UPS functions today using the road system...
, the company continued to exist, though no longer an operating company in the United States. George C. Taylor of American Express
American Express
American Express Company or AmEx, is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Three World Financial Center, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States. Founded in 1850, it is one of the 30 components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is best...
was president of American Railway Express with Burns D. Caldwell of Wells Fargo as chairman of the board of directors. Davis G. Meller, previously the firm's foreign traffic manager, assumed the presidency of Wells Fargo in 1918.
Elmer Ray Jones, who had been with Wells Fargo since 1893, purchased Wells Fargo & Company's
Express in Mexico and Wells Fargo in Cuba in 1919 for $640,000. He headed a group of men from Wells Fargo and American Express in 1924 to buy Wells Fargo & Company in the United States from the E.H. Harriman estate, making arrangements with the executors, Charles A. Peabody and Robert W. DeForest. The shares were taken by American Express (51 per cent) and the group of individuals headed by Jones (29 per cent); the remaining 20 per cent remained outstanding. In 1924 Jones was elected president of Wells Fargo, which sold its 20,000 shares in the Wells Fargo Nevada National Bank, severing the final tie between the two institutions.
Jones redeveloped Wells Fargo as a concern for armored transportation and other specialized express movements. In 1947, for instance, he personally supervised the transfer of 13 tons of gold
Gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...
from Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
to Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
by airplane. The company had a fleet of 50 armored
cars in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, ten stores handling farm equipment, automobiles and trucks, and (together with American Express) the largest travel agency in Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
. It also provided fast railroad freight service through a subsidiary, the Wells Fargo Carloading Corporation.
Succeeding Jones as president of Wells Fargo were Ralph T. Reed in 1956, Howard L. Clark in 1960, R.D. Beals in 1963, and James A. Henderson
James A. Henderson
James A. Henderson was Chairman of the Board from 1995 and Chief Executive Officer from 1994 of Cummins Inc. , Columbus, Indiana, until his retirement in December 1999. Mr. Henderson has been a Director of AT&T Inc. since October 1999. He served as a Director of Ameritech Corporation from 1983...
in 1964. Wells Fargo continued its overseas express service until the 1960s; by the middle of the decade, its subsidiaries operated armored cars in 12 Eastern and Southern states, and the concern had entered the coin-auditing and coin-rolling business.
As an operator of armored cars, the company did business as the Wells Fargo Armored Security Corporation as an affiliate of Baker Industries, and later, after its acquisition by Borg-Warner Security, as Wells Fargo Armored Service.
Loomis Armored Inc.
Lee B. Loomis established Loomis Armored Car Service in 1925 in Portland, OregonPortland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
. The company's headquarters was moved to Seattle, Washington
Seattle, Washington
Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...
, in 1932. Loomis died in 1949, but Loomis Corporation remained under his family's ownership until 1979 when it was acquired by Mayne Nickless. Wingate Partners purchased Loomis in 1991, and the company was consolidated with Wells Fargo Armored Service in 1997 to form Loomis Fargo & Company.
Loomis Fargo & Company
On July 15, 1996, Borg-Warner Security agreed to consolidate its Wells Fargo Armored Service with Loomis Armored Inc. Employing 8,500 and providing armored transportation, cash services and automated teller machine maintenance, the new concern was named Loomis Fargo & Company. The transaction was completed in 1997.Loomis Fargo in 1999 initiated a strategy for development as an international cash handling service leader. In 2001 it joined Securitas AB
Securitas AB
Securitas AB is a security services , monitoring, consulting and investigation group, based in Stockholm, Sweden. The group has approximately 300,000 employees in 50 countries in North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Securitas AB is listed at Nasdaq OMX Stockholm,...
, which was founded in Helsingborg, Sweden, in 1934 by Erik Philip-Sörensen. On November 16, 2006, Securitas AB Chief Executive Officer Hakon Ericson announced the company's intention to split into several independent, specialized security companies, with its Cash Handling Servicea Division adopting the name "Loomis" throughout its international network. By the end of June 2007 the transition to the new identity had been completed, with Loomis employing 20,000 people in a network of 420 operating locations in 11 European nations and the United States. Loomis US included by that date nearly 200 operating locations with 8,000 employees (which it terms "teammates') and a fleet of 3,000 armored cars.
In 2008, Loomis was distributed to the Securitas shareholders and listed
Initial public offering
An initial public offering or stock market launch, is the first sale of stock by a private company to the public. It can be used by either small or large companies to raise expansion capital and become publicly traded enterprises...
at Nasdaq OMX Stockholm as Loomis AB.
New Loomis Fargo and Major Robberies
During its first year of operation as the new Loomis Fargo & Company, the company was the target for two of the largest cash robberies ever committed on American soil.In March 1997, employee Philip N. Johnson
Philip N. Johnson
Philip Noel Johnson was an armored car driver employed by Loomis Fargo & Company in Jacksonville, Florida. On March 29, 1997, Johnson pulled off what was then the largest cash heist in U.S. history, taking $18.8 million from the armored vehicle he was driving....
, on his own, stole $18.8 million from the Loomis Fargo armored car that he was driving. In the October 1997 "Loomis Fargo Bank Robbery
Loomis Fargo Bank Robbery
The Loomis Fargo Bank Robbery was the $17.3 million cash robbery of the Charlotte, North Carolina, regional office vault of Loomis Fargo & Company on the evening of October 4, 1997, by armored car driver and vault supervisor David Scott Ghantt...
", employee David Scott Ghantt and accomplices stole $17.3 million from the Loomis Fargo vault that he was supervising. The perpetrators of both robberies, and a significant majority of the cash, were found by law enforcement agencies.
These two robberies, along with the unrelated $18.9 million Dunbar Armored robbery
Dunbar Armored robbery
The Dunbar Armored robbery is the largest cash robbery to have occurred in the United States. It occurred in 1997 at the Dunbar Armored facility in Los Angeles, California. The thieves made off with some US$18.9 million....
, which also occurred in 1997, were the first to surpass the previous holder of the title "largest cash robbery" in U.S. history, the $5 million cash portion (along with $0.9 million in jewellery) of the Lufthansa heist
Lufthansa heist
The Lufthansa heist was a robbery at John F. Kennedy International Airport on December 11, 1978. An estimated $5 million in cash and $875,000 in jewels were stolen, at the time making it the largest cash robbery ever committed on American soil...
of December 1978.
Robberies while being a division of Securitas
The UK division of the company hit the headlines in February 2006 when armed robbers raided its cash centre located in TonbridgeTonbridge
Tonbridge is a market town in the English county of Kent, with a population of 30,340 in 2007. It is located on the River Medway, approximately 4 miles north of Tunbridge Wells, 12 miles south west of Maidstone and 29 miles south east of London...
in Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
. The criminals made off with £53m in what is known as the Securitas depot robbery
Securitas depot robbery
The Securitas depot robbery was the largest cash robbery in British history, that took place on the evening of 21 February 2006 from 18:30 GMT until the early hours of 22 February...
.
A Securitas van was also rammed by criminals in a stolen tractor who subsequently made off with hundreds of thousands of pounds in Warrington
Warrington
Warrington is a town, borough and unitary authority area of Cheshire, England. It stands on the banks of the River Mersey, which is tidal to the west of the weir at Howley. It lies 16 miles east of Liverpool, 19 miles west of Manchester and 8 miles south of St Helens...
, Cheshire
Cheshire
Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...
.
In March 2006 an armed gang robbed a Securitas van as it was unloading money at Gothenburg's Landvetter Airport in Sweden.
On October 4, 2007, two armored truck guards working for Loomis were killed in a robbery in Northeast Philadelphia. Another man was wounded. A bank surveillance photo showed the gunman walking up to the two guards, shooting both of them execution-style, and running off with a bag containing ATM deposit envelopes. The man later confessed to the killings.
See also
- History of Wells FargoHistory of Wells FargoThis article outlines the history of Wells Fargo & Company from its origins to its merger with Norwest and beyond. The new company chose to retain the name of "Wells Fargo" and so this article also includes the history after the merger.-Origins:...
- Garda International Security Corporation
- Securitas ABSecuritas ABSecuritas AB is a security services , monitoring, consulting and investigation group, based in Stockholm, Sweden. The group has approximately 300,000 employees in 50 countries in North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Securitas AB is listed at Nasdaq OMX Stockholm,...