Managed services News
CompuCom CEO Kevin Shank: ‘I Have Unfinished Business Here’
Joseph F. Kovar
‘I have a lot of people that know me here, that remember the CompuCom that was focused on those enterprise-class customers and delivering world-class service and growing fast. And I firmly believe we can do that again,’ new CompuCom CEO Kevin Shank tells CRN.
Private equity has been an important part of CompuCom.
One funny story comes from when we were owned by Platinum Equity. A little background: Platinum Equity, out of Beverly Hills, [in 2004] acquired CompuCom, which was a public company. I was not part of that. And then they bought a carved-out portion of General Electric, GE IT Solutions. I came in from the GE business. We took a business that was very process-driven. Back in those days, GE was the most admired company in the world, the first company to hit a billion-dollar market cap. And we brought an operating discipline and a service-focused way of doing business to CompuCom, which was very entrepreneurial and grew up in the whole PC explosion. We put those two companies together and made a wonderful business. We grew it organically significantly.
Here’s the punchline: [Platinum Equity Chairman and CEO] Tom Gores sells the business roughly three years later. I can’t even tell you the return, but it was a good one. He ended up buying the Detroit Pistons shortly thereafter. So I like to tell everybody, A, I know the owner of Detroit Pistons and B, CompuCom actually led to his acquisition of the Detroit Pistons. So it’s kind of a little funny. Is it 100 percent accurate? Could be. I just don’t know if it is or not, but I’m pretty sure it was a part of it. It’s definitely a part of it.
After Court Square Capital Partners bought CompuCom from Platinum [in 2007], we went out and acquired Getronics. And that was owned by a telco in in the Netherlands, KPN Ventures. Again, we integrated those businesses and made a much stronger CompuCom and a much happier customer base. And we provided more scale, more reach, more touch and more capabilities to our customers, and we helped our customers on their technology path. …
I know [private equity is] not always the answer, but my experience with PE firms has been very positive. They buy companies to invest in them and grow them. 100 percent. That’s been my experience. And I just laid out the track record with Platinum Equity, Court Square. Not only growth through inorganic methods, we grew the businesses organically. We made a better company, and we won in the marketplace. Same opportunity with Variant. I’m very happy Variant owns CompuCom. I’m very happy we’re back focused on the right marketplace. And I’m very happy that a lot of the people that know how to go on that journey are here with us today, and the new people I’m very impressed with as well.
