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He speaks English fluently and fast, with a soft Scandinavian inflection that at times can make you pause to decipher meaning.

That loquacious, cerebral approach is, according to those who have worked with Securicor, rather different to the bluntspeak of Buckles, the Essex-born policeman’s son who started at Securicor as a project accountant. What if the two don’t get on?

Johansen shrugs it off as unlikely. “We’ve done a lot of mergers,” he says. Buckles, when it’s put to him, suggests they’ll concentrate on different tasks. “I’m more of a numbers man, Lars is a good strategist.” Johansen adds that they share values. “There is chemistry, there is trust.”

There is also a business logic to the merger that outweighs any potential clash. Securicor’s growing strength in cash services (filling ATMs, shifting money by lorry) plugs a weakness at Group 4. Likewise Group 4’s expertise in electronic security offers new possibilities to Securicor. Each gives the other fresh markets to sell in. The merger was too smart to turn down.

And anyway, few over here really know yet what the Dane’s style is. Johansen, when pushed, gives a typically well-thought-out definition.

“I don’t see myself as a King Kong manager. I hope I can use my capacity to persuade people more than to command them. I hope I can be strong in motivating people with arguments that make sense, rather than just resorting to the brute force of hierarchy. And I don’t believe in running a company by decree, you have to run it by being there, and by being a living example. So communication is extremely important.”

At Group 4 Securicor, which generates half its revenue from manned security, he wants to use that ability to improve the reputation of the industry. He promises to do that by offering better training and conditions for his staff, and getting customers to pay more.

“The UK market has been characterised by too much concentration on prices and not quality. Being a service company, what we deliver is delivered by our people, and the quality of those people is crucial. That’s why good training and good pay are essential.”

It’s a style that has been the Johansen trademark in Denmark where he is a well-known business leader, having headed a high-profile inquiry into corporate governance. Even by Danish standards of consensus management, his singular approach marks him out.

“It’s a subtle combination,” says Michael Pram Rasmussen, chief executive of the insurance company Top Danmark and an old colleague of Johansen.

“Lars appears soft-edged but he is very good at spotting the right ideas and getting people behind them. And despite growing this huge company, he is still informal, he doesn’t take himself too seriously.”

That comes from an unpretentious upbringing, second child of a provincial shopkeeper, and a radicalised education in the tumult of the late 1960s. Johansen, a Latin and Greek scholar, was president of a local socialist club while still at secondary school, and a professor in political science by 24. “But I was pretty conventional — I was never a Marxist,” he laughs.

He taught at Odense, Harvard and the European University Institute in Florence, before a stint lecturing top civil servants in Copenhagen had him switch careers with a post at Baltica Insurance. It was Baltica that bought Falck in 1988 and installed Johansen as boss. Falck floated on the Copenhagen stock exchange in 1995.

“Perhaps,” says Johansen, looking back, “my father’s store was the driver for me to get out of academia and into something more commercial.”

Was it money? “No, that’s never been an incentive.”

And does he feel comfortable selling tagging and surveillance and “justice services” (jails)?

“Sure,” he says, “tagging is monitoring, and closely related to security. I feel comfortable about it. The essence of what we do is providing the right security.”

Others note that he has never had any qualms about swimming against the flow. Take his private life. He has two grown-up children by a first marriage, an 11-year old son by another, and a third family — girlfriend and stepchildren — coming to join him in London.

“Lars has his own business style, and it’s the same in his private life,” chuckles Rasmussen, who frequently accompanies Johansen on weekend biking trips. “He’s not a simple person.”

That will make him all the more intriguing to investors over here, keen to see if he can drive Group 4 Securicor into the FTSE 100.

The potential for growth looks good. Cost savings can be made. Big corporate customers can be followed into developing markets. And there are still developed countries that Johansen needs to expand into: Spain, Portugal, and Australia among them.

But the next 18 months will just be about integration. “Each has different strengths,” says Johansen, pondering the British and Scandinavian corporate styles. “I’m just hoping we can blend something interesting.”

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