Category: Moving People

Avnet makes Erin Lewin its chief pleader

Posted on February 27, 2013 by - Moving People, News

Erin LewenAvnet has named Erin Lewin as its new senior vice president and general counsel.

Lewin, who has been praised by the company as “demonstrating her ability to effectively guide a global team,” will report to Avnet Chief Executive Officer Rick Hamada and serve as a member of the Avnet Executive Board and Global Executive Council.

She is responsible for leading Avnet’s global legal team and providing advice and guidance to the company’s business leaders.

Lewin first joined the distie in 2007 and, before her promotion, served as vice president and general counsel, Americas,  where she gave legal advice and the rest to Avnet’s businesses in the Americas.

Before this she was Avnet’s chief ethics and compliance officer for two years, overseeing all aspects of Avnet’s ethics and compliance program globally. Avnet did not give a general description of its ethics at press time.

Lewin said she looked forward to contributing to the success of the comoany’s individual team members and the organisation as a whole.

She succeeds David Birk, who retired after serving as Avnet’s top lawyer since 1989.

HMV to shut 66 retail shops across Britain

Posted on February 7, 2013 by - Moving People, News

hmv-administrationHMV’s administrators announced Thursday that 66 retail stores across Britain will close their doors over the next two months.

HMV, which entered administration in January, currently operates 220 stores in the UK. Deloitte said the affected stores employ 930 staff, but no fixed date has been set for their closure yet.

Staff quickly took to Twitter, talking about redundancies made across HMV offices and distribution centres.

Deloitte, HMV’s administrator, is in talks with restructuring specialist Hilco about a possible takeover of HMV. Hilco is said to be in talks with suppliers and HMV’s landlords, as part of an effort to save about half of the shops in the UK, Express reports.

“This step has been taken in order to enhance the prospects of securing the business’ future as a going concern,” Nick Edwards, joint administrator at Deloitte, said. “We continue to receive strong support from staff and are extremely grateful to them for their commitment during an understandably difficult period.”

HMV became a hugely profitable enterprise following the introduction of CDs and cheap video tech in the eighties. It quickly expanded around the world, opening shops in North America and on the continent. Its retail operation peaked in the naughties, with 325 shops up and running. However, HMV failed to recognise the threat posed by online distribution to its traditional retail approach and by the late 2000s it was in more trouble than it could handle.

HMV is not the first retail outfit to face collapse due to online competition. Camera chain Jessops and DVD rental business Blockbuster were forced to close last month.

The HMV stores set to close over the next two months are:

England: Ashton-under-Lyne, Barnsley, Bayswater, Bexleyheath, Birkenhead, Birmingham Fort, Blackburn, Boston, Bournemouth Castlepoint, Bracknell, Burton-upon-Trent, Camberley, Chesterfield, Croydon Centrale, Durham, Fulham, Huddersfield, Leamington Spa, Leeds White Rose, Loughborough, Luton, Manchester 90, Moorgate, Orpington, Rochdale, Scunthorpe, South Shields, Speke Park, St Albans, St Helens, Stockton-on-Tees, Tamworth, Teesside, Telford, Trocadero, Wakefield, Walsall, Walton-on-Thames, Wandsworth, Warrington, Watford, Wellingborough, Wigan, Wood Green, Workington

Scotland: Dumfries, Edinburgh Fort, Edinburgh Gyle Centre, Edinburgh Ocean, Edinburgh Princes Street, Edinburgh St James, Falkirk, Glasgow – Fort, Glasgow – Silverburn, Glasgow Braehead, Kirkcaldy

Northern Ireland: Ballymena, Belfast Boucher Road, Belfast Forestside, Coleraine, Craigavon, Derry, Lisburn, Newry, Newtownabbey

Wales: Wrexham

Alcatel – Lucent CEO steps down following $1.85bn loss

Posted on February 7, 2013 by - Moving People, News

alcatel-lucentThe chief executive of struggling telecom equipment maker Alcatel – Lucent is leaving the company. Ben Verwaayen took the helm four years ago and tried to return the outfit to profit. He failed.

Alcatel – Lucent posted a $1.85 billion loss for 2012, compared to a $1.49 billion gain in 2011, so Verwaayen’s departure should come as no surprise.  Verwaayen announced his decision to step down in a statement Thursday, saying that now is the appropriate moment for Alcatel – Lucent to seek new leadership.

“Alcatel-Lucent has been an enormous part of my life. It was therefore a difficult decision to not seek a further term, but it was clear to me that now is an appropriate moment for the Board to seek fresh leadership to take the company forward,” said Verwaayen.

Philippe Camus, Chairman of the Alcatel-Lucent Board, said: “After due reflection, the Board has accepted Ben’s decision to step down as CEO.” Camus went on to thank Verwaayen for his efforts to stabilise the company over the past four years.

It remains unclear who will replace Verwaayen and he is likely to stay on until a successor is found. The company said it would consider in-house candidates as well as candidates from outside the company.

Although Verwaayen did not manage to turn things around, he can hardly be blamed for Alcatel – Lucent’s woes. The company was created following a $11.6 merger of Lucent Technologies and Alcatel in 2006. It has been downhill ever since. Verwaayen, the former head of the  BT Group, joined the company in 2008, after the previous American-led management was ousted.

Alcatel – Lucent has been trying to restructure and reposition itself in the telecom infrastructure market, but so far it did not have much luck competing against the likes of Ericsson and Huawei.

Google buys Channel Intelligence for $125 million

Posted on February 7, 2013 by - Moving People, News

google-ICGoogle is continuously trying to improve its e-commerce business and its latest acquisition should give it a nudge in the right direction. The search giant bought e-commerce solution provider Channel Intelligence for $125 million in an all-cash deal.

Channel Intelligence is active in 31 countries and it offers a wide range of e-commerce services.

The company has been a partner of Google Shopping for years and the two outfits worked together on Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) and Product Listing Ads (PLA) products. In addition, Channel Intelligence offers a range of free services, including Facebook integration and product search widgets and an e-commerce back end, dubbed Shopping Engine.

Channel Intelligence announced the deal on its website, adding that all of its services will be available for years to come. The company has been around since 1999 and it tracks about 15 percent of all online transactions in the US. It is behind $2 billion in sales through referrals every year.

ICG group announced Wednesday that the transaction should be finalized in the first quarter of 2013. ICG is expected to realize $60.5 million in connection with the transaction.

“Building upon the perseverance and strong foundation laid by CI’s founder Rob Wight, I am extremely proud of the work we accomplished at CI,” said Doug Alexander, CEO of CI and President of ICG. “With the talent and hard work of the entire CI team, we successfully navigated a very complex marketplace, ending a record year that culminated in this very exciting acquisition.”

Wright said he is thrilled to see the recognition of CI’s value. He said the company’s vision was to simplify the online shopping experience and that he is very proud to see the vision executed to such a “great outcome.”

Ingram Micro says ta ta to senior chief

Posted on February 6, 2013 by - Moving People, News

IMMegadistributor Ingram Micro said its Senior Director of its Volume Technology Group, will be leaving the firm in March.

Desmond Ling, who moved to Australia in 2011 to take up the job, has now decided to return to his home country of New Zealand to spend more time with his family.

His boots will be filled by Julian Phua who will rejoin the company on the 18 of this month under the title of  Commercial Director.

He will return to the company after a six year stint as general manager of product development and supply chain at Cellnet in Brisbane.

Prior to that stint, Phua spent almost 10 years at Tech Pacific and then Ingram Micro between 1998 and 2007.

Box pushes, with force, into EMEA channel

Posted on February 5, 2013 by - Moving People, News

boxfactoryEnterprise cloud and collaboration company Box is launching a channel partner programme packed with incentives and organised by industry veterans to boost growth in the UK and EMEA.

The Silicon Valley firm posted an impressive end of fiscal year in 2012 with its technology in roughly 150,000 enterprises and with about 15 million users, channel director Chris Penner told ChannelEye, along with over 17,000 developers actively building custom apps for the platform. Pre-partner programme, the company has been busy boosting its roster of seasoned executives and went on a poaching spree over a six month period, bringing on staff with experience at Salesforce, VMware, HP, NetApp, Cisco and more to make sure it gets the channel strategy right on the first try.

One such hire is David Quantrell, who joined Box in September 2012 to run Box’s channel strategy in EMEA. Prior to this role he was President, EMEA for McAfee, and also has experience at HP and Nortel.

Wayne Cook, another hire, was previously at McAfee and is now a VP for channel and alliances at Box.

Penner told us that for the poached staff, moving over to Box presented an opportunity “of a lifetime” in a company that is well positioned with proper venture backing, a tremendous install base, and $40 billion pre-IPO. “A lot of ingredients that don’t come along every day,” Penner said. “We are building a really fundamental industry leading channel”.

Box Partner Network will create an “ecosystem of strategic alliance, channel and platform partners” that will bring Box’s content into new markets and, it hopes, drive further lofty aims of expansion. In a press release, the company boasted that, although in relative infancy, the company already had tons of big business clients signed up, including EA, NBC, Nationwide, Discovery Communications, Sony Music, and Netflix.

Starting partners include Autodesk, AtTask, Fonality, Marketo, CollabNet, Clarizen, TIBCO, Tidemark, and Xero – while five new partners, CollabNet, Clarizen, Fonality, tibbr, and Tidemark, will be tasked with leveraging the Box Embed HTML5 framework introduced late last year.

50 resellers have been signed up on a global basis over the last four months, including big hitters such as Ingroam Micro.

Interested channel players should head here.

As for Box’s position in the tech industry, Penner is optimistic: he tells us that end users love the service for its collaboration tools and simplicity, while IT likes Box because they know exactly what technology is going to be on premises and can control and manage every level of content in a secure manner – which is not the case for consumer alternatives, Penner said.

 

Roman Abramovich buys big chunk of phone company

Posted on February 1, 2013 by - Moving People, News

Roman AbramovichRussian magnate Roman Abramovich has plunged £70 million into phone company Truphone, giving him a 23.3 percent stake of the company.

Abramovich is the owner of Chelsea football club and is said to be worth over £8 billion.

Abramovich used his investment cmpany Minden, to take the stake.  The investment means that Truphone will take on 500 more staff over the next 18 months, with many jobs in the UK.

The British company was founded by Hames Tagg.  The technology lets you use a SIM card to access local voice, data and text services and at local rates in the 220 countries it covers, with local rates available here, in the USA, and Australia.

Truphone intends to open businesses in Hong Kong, Spain, Poland, Germany, and the Netherlands this year.

David Atherton assumes a new position

Posted on January 31, 2013 by - Moving People, News

dabs01Serial entrepreneur David Atherton – the brains behind dabs.com which he subsequently sold to BT for a heap of dosh – has a new position, it has emerged.

David is now a consultant at Suzanna’s Pub and Restaurant. We think it’s this one, but we’re not entirely sure.

As part of his iconic career, David once confided to me in a pub close to the Register’s then HQ in East Mayfair that he, like myself, was subject to a Jesuitic regime when he was a kid.

His legacy at DABS is not over.  Just a few days ago, at the Beehive pub in Crawford Street, just off Baker Street, we snapped a branded bag bearing the logo.

Qualcomm raises 2013 outlook

Posted on January 31, 2013 by - Moving People, News

snap dragon Qualcomm has posted  strong quarterly results for the beginning of 2013, which have led to the company raising its revenue and earnings predictions for the upcoming year.

The chip company said saw its net income grow by 36 percent for the first quarter fiscal 2013,  hitting $1.91 billion, while revenues totalled $6.02 billion, up 29 percent year-over-year.

Qualcomm chief exec Paul Jacobs put the results down to a “growing global demand for smartphones” and the company’s portfolio of 3G and 4G LTE processors.

He added that the company’s broad licensing partnerships and “extensive chipset roadmap”, including its new Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 and 600 processors, had also attributed to the growth.

Revenue from licensing fees grew by 20 percent to $1.82 billion, while equipment and services sales rose by 33 percent, generating the company $4.2 billion.

As a result of the stronger than anticipated results, the company said that it is adjusting its full year outlook from a previous revenue prediction of $23.4 billion to $24.4 billion.

Qualcomm also made some announcements regarding its senior level staff.

In a separate statement Qualcomm said that it would be saying goodbye to CFO William Keitel, who it retiring after 11 years at the post.

Keitel, who will step down on 11 March, will be replaced with George S. Davis, who is currently executive vice president and chief financial officer of Applied Materials.

Ingram Micro makes changes to top level staff

Posted on January 24, 2013 by - Moving People, News

IMIngram Micro is making some changes to its employee and portfolio line up.

Over the week the distie has announced a range of movers and shakers within its senior management level.

Yesterday it said it was saying goodbye to its executive vice president and chief information officer Mario Leone who was leaving the company at the beginning of March.

The company is yet to announce a successor for Leone who had been at the firm for four years, however, has said that while it looks for a suitable candidate Nimesh Dave,

Ingram Micro executive vice president, global business process and cloud computing, would step in and take responsibility and oversight of the company’s worldwide information and business systems.

And it seems the company is also making some top level changes over in North America with the news that it has promoted Kirk Robinson to senior vice president, Commercial Markets and Global Accounts for this region.

The promotion will mean that Robinson who has been with the company for 20 years, will now oversee ownership of the distributor’s global accounts and supervision of additional strategic key business units. He will also be responsible for managing the business leaders responsible for Ingram’s SMB, public sector and VAR business units.

Singing his praises the company said throughout his career with Ingram Micro, Robinson had made a “notable impact” on the success of its sales teams and was responsible for leading key initiatives including the launch of the distributor’s proprietary Business Intelligence Centre in 2009, which had “since grown into one of the company’s most valuable service differentiators.”

It added that under Robinson’s leadership, the commercial markets division and its SMB business unit had “reached record growth rates” and enabled hundreds of new channel partners.

Robinson joined Ingram Micro in 1993 as a sales representative and worked his way up to sales director. In 2003, he moved into the marketing department as senior director, channel programs and in 2004 he was promoted to customer and solutions marketing vice president. In September 2006, Robinson was named vice president of North America channel marketing. Then, in May 2010, he was appointed vice president of VAR sales, market development and business intelligence. Shortly thereafter, Robinson became the vice president of Ingram Micro’s US commercial markets business.

But it doesn’t end there, as well as promoting and losing staff, the company has also said that it will be making bigger moves in the physical security marketplace,  announcing that HID Global’s secure identity products will now be available to its US channel partners through the Ingram Micro North America Physical Security Business Unit.

The company said it had added this as security threats became more complex and business needed more robust services. It added this presented a growing business opportunity for channel partners specialising in this space.