Former Lenovo boss directed to CEO chair in Avnet's exec lounge

Bill Amelio lands top job at tech distie... on temp basis

Enterprise tech distie Avnet has ejected Rick Hamada from the CEO chair and his seat on the board amid a warning that sales and profits have not tracked to previous forecasts.

Hamada’s successor? Bill Amelio, former top dog at Lenovo and one-time Asia Pacific president at Dell who has buckets of experience of running high volume sales operations… outside of the channel.

The corporate exorcism appeared quick and easy, from Avnet’s perspective anyway, as Hamada’s four-year stint in high office was today confirmed to be over with immediate effect.

Chairman of the board William Schumann said Amelio joins as a temp CEO, but talked up his “extensive experience in international business operations, corporate leadership and management”.

These skills, Avnet assured us, will “help steer the company toward success in a rapidly changing industry”.

The problems facing Avnet are similar to those facing Amelio's previous employers - the world is shifting to cloud services.

Avnet recently launched its own cloud platform in Europe so thinks it might have an answer to arrest organic revenues declines in recent years.

Arch rival Arrow has had a brokering service for around four years and its run rate volumes are close to $200m, which remains a drop in the total business.

Avnet also confirmed that sales likely to be at least $100m lower than the previously forecasted and that earnings per share are expected to be in the range of $0.80 to $0.86, rather than $0.95 to $1.05.

Revenue was hit by an ERP transition in the Americas components business and the operating income slips translated ibro circa ¢15m of lower gross profits and $15m in additional costs, largely selling, general & admin.

Amelio, who said he was looking forward to meeting the “talented” workforce at Avnet, left Lenovo in 2009 after sales crashed and losses mounted, ccoming in at $97m for his final quarter in charge.

Since then, Amelio was CEO at CHC Helicopter and a partner at private equity business Daylight Partners. ®