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Report from Serco AGM

sharetheworlder | 12.05.2009 16:16

Dubbed ‘probably the biggest company you’ve never heard of’.

Serco are a multinational viral company heavily involved in the arms trade, Aldermaston nuclear weapons establishment, outsourced education and health services in the UK, as well as the running of private prisons around the world and immigration removal centres like Yarls’ Wood, where 2000 children are detained every year. Serco recently won new contracts to run immigration detention centres in Australia:
 http://www.safecom.org.au/serco-australia.htm

This morning Serco held their AGM in the Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre, just a stone’s throw from the Houses of Parliament. The surroundings are plush, the food and drink plentiful, the security tight. Every year a group of rogue shareholding peace women disrupt the meeting with poetry, prose and song, until they are physically removed by security. Today was no different. Once ‘order’ was restored the meeting proceeded.

The chief executive then presented to shareholders with a roll call of achievements of the past year and future plans, such as the increase in defence contracts with the US government and Serco’s £2.5 billion in profits to be reaped over the next 10 years from the NHS contract with Guy’s and St Thomas’s Hospital. Serco funded the 1998 IPPR research that resulted in government private-public partnerships and then went on to scoop up one government contract after another.

Shareholders sat quietly listening to the litany of corruption and theft. The chair then thanked all shareholders for their attendance and their patience during the disruptions. This was clearly too much for an elderly lady who had arrived late. She jumped up and shouted at the platform and the floor. ‘Killing is BIG BUSINESS.’ The man in front of her groaned and said ‘not again’. A slow handclap started so she screamed louder and louder, ‘murderers, murderers, murderers’ until security staff surrounded her and she was escorted from the building.

Financial information:
 http://www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/equities/NewsFeedItem.aspx?id=78698833308303
 http://www.serco.com/

Campaigns against Serco:
 http://undestrike.com/node/3
 http://www.handsoffhaywoodhigh.org.uk/serco.html
 http://www.wri-irg.org/node/6667
 http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=2578

sharetheworlder