Oceanic action: suspected pirates arrested by French navy commandos in the Gulf of Aden

Tim Spicer, the founder and chief executive of Aegis Defence Services, the private security company whose main market is in Iraq, is preparing to do battle on the high seas by tackling piracy off the coast of Somalia.The company is in talks with several states in the region, including the Yemeni and Djibouti governments, about setting up a command and control centre that would monitor the threat of piracy and act as an information exchange centre for vessels in the area. Somali pirates have stepped up attacks in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean in recent weeks, forcing the issue on to the agenda of Western governments.

It is unclear how successful any project would be, given the scale of piracy attacks and the limited resources of Yemen and Djibouti. The latter, which borders Somalia, hosts a US counterterrorism military base and French forces, but it is tiny with few resources.

Simply putting guards on ships or engaging pirates “was not quite as simple as some people think”, Mr Spicer added. Nevertheless, he said Aegis was comfortable it would be possible “with the agreement of one of the littoral states” to have the ability to put personnel on and off ships and for them to carry firearms with certain control measures imposed on them. Mr Spicer added that Aegis, which first looked at maritime security in response to piracy problems in the Far East several years ago, was primarily interested in acting as a “co-ordinating body” to make it easier for commercial shipping to interact with naval forces. Aegis is also in talks with the US government, as well as insurance and shipping companies.

While helping to combat piracy is one area of potential expansion, Mr Spicer said the biggest opportunity still lay in securing large government contracts.

A former officer in the Scots Guards, he courted controversy in the 1990s when Sandline, a company he was a director of, was embroiled in a row over supplying arms to the disposed president of Sierra Leone.

He founded Aegis in 2002 and the company became one of the leading private security companies in Iraq after clinching a deal with the Pentagon in 2004 to support reconstruction efforts. That first contract has since grown into 11 government contracts, including one with the Italians.

The company saw a big rise in turnover and profits according to its latest accounts for the year end December 2008. Turnover rose from £73.8m in 2007 to £126.3m, while pre-tax profit increased from £1.7m to £11.4m over the same period.

Aegis generates about 80 per cent of its turnover from Iraq.

It also has some small commercial contracts in Afghanistan.

Both Mr Spicer and Jeffrey Day, Aegis’s joint managing director, stress the importance of the company’s reputation, noting the level of oversight the security industry operates under today.

Mr Spicer rejects the term “mercenary” – “it doesn’t apply to us” – noting that Aegis is keen to position itself as something other than just a private security company.