Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Ted Reid

CFO, Paladin Security Group, President, Paladin Security Systems Age: 39
ted_reid_2012-web-nu

With his entrepreneurial father as a role model, Ted Reid knew he wanted to work in business from a young age.

“I always liked what he did, as far as business was involved: dealing with people, trying to develop teams and grow sales and deal with finance issues,” he said. “All those were things that interested me.”

As CFO and president, Reid has helped to grow Paladin Security from a regional firm to a national player. The company has acquired Atco Security in Alberta, OBO Security in Manitoba, Reliant Security in Nova Scotia and Maddison Security in Toronto, among others, since 2008.

“Our foray into new provinces has always been preceded by an acquisition … in order to have a beachhead set up in each province,” he said.

The company is now one of the largest security companies in Canada, with 6,000 employees and 16 branch offices.

Building a strong finance team has been key to the company’s success. Reid now believes Paladin has “the strongest accounting team in our industry in Canada, and that allows us to make better business decisions.”

Developing that group of employees has taken time and careful thought.

“It takes a lot of coaching, it takes a lot of discussions on developing the values that we want to establish as a team,” he said. “One of the questions I always ask our team is, how do you want to be valued outside of our department?” •