South Africa’s biggest IT distributor, the Pinnacle Group, is upping gears and positioning itself for the future with a number of key strategic announcements which will see a shuffling of top executives, as well as the formation of an additional subsidiary which will focus on new technologies and acquisitions. By Mark Davison
A formal Stock Exchange News Service (SENS) announcement is expected to be posted later this morning, but IT-Online has reliably learnt that, from 1 January next year, Pierre Spies and Arnold Fourie will become joint CEOs of the group.
Fourie will step down on 30 June 2016, after which Spies will take over as CEO.
Craig Brunsden will fill Spies’ position at AxizWorkgroup as the company’s MD.
Meanwhile, Tim Humphreys-Davies, currently MD of the regions, will become MD of Pinnacle Africa, including all the vertical businesses (Modrac, Datanet, Pinnsec, Pinnpos and Pinnacle Business Solutions) and will continue to grow thebusiness north of the border within the SADC region.
Henry Ferreira who, over the past few years has filled various executive posts – more recently responsible for group distribution, will move across to head up the new subsidiary within the organisation. Currently labelled Emerging Technologies and Systems Integration – a new name could be in the offing at a later date – the new subsidiary will include current acquisition targets such as Datacentrix and any others in the future.
As far as could be ascertained, Advanced Technologies, under the leadership of Jacques Malherbe, will not be affected by the restructuring.
The group has also acquired the services of two channel veterans in current Tarsus stalwart Greg Pothitos and the former MD of Rectron, Cheslynne Britz. Britz has joined AxizWorkgroup to head up Dell Software, while Pothitos will join Pinnacle on 1 January, initially responsible for brands such as Super Micro and Fujitsu.
More updates on this story as official announcements are made.