To protect Hong Kong’s tycoons and celebrities, hired bodyguards use more brains than brawn
IF YOUR MENTAL IMAGES of bodyguards are 100kg beasts shaped like sumo wrestlers flanking the likes of Lindsay Lohan or Madonna, think again. Think Brosnan’s size, Connery’s physique, Jackie Chan’s prowess. Think grey matter over muscle, Green Berets over Ninjas, Bond over the Hulk.
“Unfortunately the stereotype of a bodyguard is a big guy who just stands there,” says Mike, a bodyguard for a CEO of a large bank. “We call those guys qualified shit-catchers, someone whose job is just to stand there and catch things. They rarely have any other skills.”
In an era of increased surveillance and technology, not to mention in a city like Hong Kong where curve balls aimed at some of the most powerful people on the globe are impossible to predict, bodyguards need a lot of skills. More wealth means higher stakes and higher stakes means greater risk. The bottom line: bodyguards need to be on their game at all times, even when the situation seems soporific.
Mike tips the scales at 88kg and, aside from his highly defined physique, blends in with the rest of the Pacific Place crowd on an average afternoon. He’s not Mike Tyson, but you wouldn’t want to find yourself in a boxing ring with him. Although he’s a former personal trainer and karate instructor, trained in jujitsu and kickboxing, his goal is to never have to use those skills. He’s into brainpower: thinking ahead, planning obsessively – “to be seen,” says Mike, “but not noticed.”
“You’ve got to have everything organized and work like clockwork, so that if something goes wrong, all the systems are in place,” says Bruce McLaren, a bodyguard and co-founder of Signal 8 Security, which specializes in celebrity security. “Ideally there are at least three alternatives – three different routes to and from places. What if this is blocked? What if you don’t like the look of that? Then you vary the route. Some people leave the house at 9:50am every morning, they drive the same route, they stop at the same traffic light, they leave work at the same time. You don’t want that.”
There is no official number of bodyguards working in Hong Kong. Estimates range between several hundred and several thousand. Some are hired solely to protect one person, while others, like the people Signal 8 employs, are primarily called in for VIPs visiting Hong Kong. On average, hiring one bodyguard costs US$50 an hour or $600 a day. For two bodyguards, it costs $1,100 a day, and for four, $2,000 a day.
Hong Kong is a relatively mellow place to work as a bodyguard, says McLaren. Pesky press and paparazzi, overzealous fans, stalkers and occasionally “crazy exes” tend to be more of a threat than triads or vengeful businessmen, although he has had clients with contracts out on them. Local millionaire Harry Lam, who had a stake in Shenzhen’s Mission Hills Golf Course, was gunned down in 2002 while finishing his tea at the Luk Yu Teahouse. He did not have bodyguards. Chinachem’s Teddy Wang was kidnapped in 1983 and again in1990, but he was never found. Li Ka-shing’s eldest son Victor was kidnapped in 1996 and Walter Kwok in 1997. The bodyguard business has boomed as a result.
The idea of a bodyguard evokes money, prominence, power, and sometimes that’s all he’s used for. “A lot of people use their bodyguards as a sign of prestige,” says McLaren, who towers above almost everyone at 1.9m, but otherwise blends in, wearing jeans and a University of Texas T-shirt. “They’ve got their Rolls-Royce, their million dollar watch, and they’ve got their bodyguards. And they want everyone to see their bodyguards.”
An ideal team consists of four or five bodyguards, all unarmed. True effectiveness doesn’t come from numbers but from coordination, brainpower, seamless team playing, like Manchester United taking on Real Madrid.
McLaren escorted Arnold Schwarzenegger through Stanley Market in 1999 with only one partner. He had only two hours notice, which wasn’t enough to corral an appropriately sized team. “Arnold’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt and smoking a cigar, we get out of the car and all you hear is ‘There’s Arnold Schwarzenegger!’” he recalls, laughing. “We literally had to walk him through this rabbit warren. We would’ve needed at least four to six guys to do it properly. Nobody knew he was coming though, so it was low-risk, but it was a pain.”
McLaren recalls another time in which he was guarding supermodel Linda Evangelista. He was standing outside her changing room when he was urgently called to come inside. “All I hear is, ‘I can’t get this zipper, it’s stuck!’ We’re talking probably a $10,000 dress!” He pauses to demonstrate how he tugged on the zipper but couldn’t get it to move. “After about a minute she turned to me and said, ‘Looks like we haven’t had much practice at this, have we?’” McLaren laughs. “I just shook my head. There’s no comeback after that.”
The market for hiring bodyguards doesn’t fluctuate with the economy because the people who hire them are immune to economic dips, says Nigel Collett, managing director of Gurkha International Group, which employs Nepalese bodyguards. “They aren’t like drivers or personal staff, who do tend to be a good bellwether as to what’s going on. As soon as people start hiring drivers, you know that the economy is booming. But bodyguards are too fundamental, they’re apart from that.”
The bodyguard business is divided into three primary groups: Westerners with formal bodyguard training, local Chinese bodyguards, many of whom are from military backgrounds, and Gurkhas like Collett. No body or official organization oversees bodyguard training in Hong Kong, so there’s a loose fourth category of people working as bodyguards with no formal training. Anyone can work as a bodyguard as long as they have a government-endorsed security and guarding service permit. McLaren pulls his out of his pocket; it’s a flimsy piece of triplicate paper.
“To get this, it’s 16 hours of training but there’s nothing about first aid, nothing about defense, it’s all about how to patrol premises, fill out logbooks and how to wear your uniform,” he says. “You could get this and set up a bodyguard company. We fall under the same category as these old codgers sitting at a desk in an apartment building and falling asleep.”
McLaren and his Los Angeles-based Signal 8 co-founder, Kim-Maree Penn, who is a bodyguard for the singer Rihanna, make sure their employees are trained to International Bodyguard Association (IBA) standards, which means a minimum of 40 hours of training for junior member status. Collett’s employees aren’t trained according to IBA standards, but receive training from ex-officers of the Hong Kong Police Department’s Very Important Person Protection Unit (VIPPU), which he believes is better than IBA training because it’s tailored to Hong Kong situations.
Though McLaren can claim fame to zipping Evangelista’s dress, escorting Schwarzenegger and walking Sting down Hollywood Road in search of a Buddha, a bodyguard’s life isn’t all glitz and glam. It’s stressful, and can also be tedious, says Collett. “The rich and famous in Hong Kong live very long hours,” Collett says. “They work a lot and then they socialize. So when the boss is out, the bodyguard’s out. And if the boss is only getting five hours of sleep a night, then so is the bodyguard. It’s quite a hard life. They earn their money.”
