The worse the U.S. economy fares and the bigger the income inequality gap grows, the better business seems to get for Paul Viollis
and Douglas Kane. Their New York City-based company, Risk Control
Strategies, has doubled its revenues this year by providing security
services to the affluent.
That
idea came years before the collapse of Wall Street, the recession and
Occupy Wall Street. Paul Viollis acknowledges the indelicacy of their
serendipitous success, and explains why he’s proud of their mission to
protect the 1 percent.
How did Occupy Wall Street and the economy in general benefit your business?
People
generally think, “I’m okay, I live under the radar,” and don’t
recognize risk, but whenever you see a major event, that’s when our
business spikes. Forensically, back in the fourth quarter of 2008, we
had the implosion of Wall Street, the AIG collapse, the whole Paul son
thing with the banks — that’s really where we had the growth spurt, and
we’ve been in critical mass since.
What types of clients do you serve?
Senior
level, C suite execs and entrepreneurs, people who have had significant
liquidity events and are now retired investors, and on the
institutional side, single and multi-family offices and the advisor
community.
Do you get a sense from these clients that there is a growing culture of fear?
No
question. Several clients have opted to secure an alternative residence
outside the country. Two have actually bought islands. There’s an
apprehension right now among the high net-worth community as to are we
really safe from terrorism, and where are we economically, as in, are we
going to become the next Greece or Italy? There’s a huge vote of no
confidence among our clients as far as where the country is headed.
Do you attribute the fact that you almost doubled revenue this year to Occupy Wall Street?
Yes.
People want to make sure they’re preemptively addressing certain risks.
It doesn’t help when you have clients getting emails from strangers
saying, “I know you have lunch at the Starbucks on Williams and John,”
or “That’s a nice house you have in Greenwich.” That kind of spooks you a
little bit.
Do you deal with a lot of paranoia from clients?
Part
of the job is to hand-hold the client. I spend a lot of time visiting
with clients all over the country. If someone is anxious, it helps to
look someone in the face rather than communicating over email. And
education is key.
What’s the oddest request you’ve gotten from a client?
The
past three to four months, we’ve been inundated with calls from folks
who want to get together an Armageddon plan — in the event of a nuclear
attack, terrorist attack, biological test, wanting to get off, say, the
island [of Manhattan] to a safe house. That’s not going to happen. What
will happen is New York will be shut down.
What type of requests do you more commonly deal with?
The
main ones are detail background investigations — not background checks —
on house staff. Another growth spurt has been our technical
surveillance counter measure practice, because of the desire of
companies such as hedge funds to verify that eavesdropping devices are
not in their offices. Our cyber security practice has grown for building
small servers and putting them in people’s homes so they can
communicate safely over the Internet.
