Getronics' new UK CEO details local growth plans

Firm's UK CEO explains to CRN how the newly acquired IT services provider will move forward on local shores

Getronics will make further acquisitions in the "near term" as the dust settles on the IT services firm being acquired last month.

The firm was sold to a US-Brazilian entrepreneur for €220m (£194.4m) from Aurelius in July, which acquired Getronics from Dutch telco KPN in 2012.

Getronics was snapped up by Brazilian strategic investor Bottega InvestCo, whose majority shareholder is US-Brazilian entrepreneur Nana Baffour.

After the acquisition, Getronics moved to install a new UK CEO, Paul Fox, who previously ran new business sales for Getronics UK and led global business development activities.

Fox told CRN that Getronics has gone through a programme of change to take it forward "with a portfolio of digital solutions" and he explained this was predominantly achieved through acquisitions.

"We bought five companies during the time that Aurelius owned the organisation [between 2012 and 2017]. This was a combination of cloud services businesses, applications companies and unified communications firms that have really allowed us to create an integrated IT solutions company focused on digital solutions in the mid-market," said Fox.

"I have been in the role [of UK CEO] for two weeks now and I plan a continuation of what has been started over the last couple of years. We have already taken the business forward significantly in terms of transitioning the portfolio of offerings we take to market."

Fox said Getronics had organic growth of 10 per cent during 2016 and non-organic growth through acquisitions of around 25 per cent.

"While we have not made any UK-specific acquisitions, all of them have been at a group level, with quite often a significant capability in the UK that we are able to leverage," he said.

"Our new owners have stated that they want to grow the business to €1bn (£920m) within the next two years, so an ambitious growth plan. Seventy-five per cent of the growth ambition we are looking to achieve is going to come through acquisitions."

Fox said there is a strong focus on looking at good potential acquisitions that will "strengthen its core capabilities" and give it increased geographical scope.

"While I am not in a position to give specific details about which companies and which geographies are in view at the moment [for acquisitions], it is fair to say that we are likely to give details of further acquisitions in the near term due to our growth objective," he said.

As for the unique aspects of the Getronics business in the UK, Fox explained that the firm has the most mature set-up of capabilities in terms of how it sells into the UK market compared with the wider group.

"One of the advantages of Getronics as an organisation is that we deliver consistency across all the geographies we operate in, so I wouldn't say we operate or perform in an especially different way in the UK except for that maturity," added Fox.

Getronics has also appointed Nana Baffour as chairman and group CEO, while former CEO Mark Cook has been appointed as vice chairman to the Getronics group board of management.