Apax stops sale of $2.3B armored car company

Apax🅠 Partners won’t be cashing out of its investment in armored car company GardaWorld Security.

The private-equity firm has ended the a🐽uction to sell the Montreal-based company for more tha🅠n $2.3 billion after putting it on the block last summer, The Post has learned. Garda CEO Stéphan Crétier, who founded the company in 1995, was one obstacle to a sale, sources said.

♚Crétier partnered with Apax on the 2012 buyout, including rolling over his 25 percent stake into the private company, and wanted to maintain a tight grip should it change hands again.

“H൩e wanted an extraordinary degree of contr🥃ol over everything, and that chased away bidders,” a source said.

PE firms were the only suitors for the company, whose cash-handling business is secon🍬d to Brink’s Global Services, sources ꦐsaid. Typically, PE firms want full control over management.

The tighter 𓄧debt markets did not help mꦬatters either, as they made it more expensive to finance another leveraged buyout, one source said.

Apax declined comment.