All change at the top of Westcon as CEO Douglas exits

Westcon Group has confirmed that Dean Douglas' four-year plus stint as CEO will end in January when Dolph Westerbos rolls into town amid sliding profits.

The enterprise distie - networking, security and unified comms - revealed that Douglas - who sat in the CEO hot seat from 1 April 2009 - is to leave the business to "take up another role".

US and Dutch national Westerbos spent the last three years as Asia Pacific and EMEA group president at pallet, container and crate pooling service provider CHEP, the main operating company of Brambles.

Prior to that he was Dell EMEA veep of solutions and services, helping the firm take the first steps to work with tech distributors. Before that was at ModusLink, a logistics, IT and BPO firm.

His "experience in global supply chain operations coupled with technology based services and his focus on operational efficiency and international commerce will be invaluable," said Datatec boss Jens Montanana.

He thanked Douglas for "globalising" Westcon during his tenure.

Westcon, like the distribution sector as a whole, has found bottom line growth hard to come by: in fiscal '13 ended 28 February sales edged up three per cent to $3.8bn but higher operating costs hit operating profits, which fell more than 18 per cent to $98.2m.

The pressure on operating profits didn't let up in the half-year numbers for fiscal '14, down more than a third to $35m with an ERP deployment in North America and the economy stateside blamed.

Three was the magic number for sales percentage growth again in H1, rising to $1.96bn for the period ended August. But revenue is vanity and profit is sanity, as the much used phrase in the channel goes. ®