Parts Alliance reorganises leadership

Peter Sephton, who joined as Parts Alliance group CEO in August 2013 has announced some senior appointments. Sephton is aligning the four businesses into two regional alliances, the Western Alliance formed from GMF and CES and the Eastern Alliance, formed by SCMF and Allparts. Each Alliance will share resources, systems and best practice to accelerate growth, facilitate new branch openings, develop staff training and invest in tools to take customer service to world leading standards.

Steve McCann, of CES, takes on the role as managing director for the Western Alliance and Mark Darvill, of Allparts, takes on the role as MD of the Eastern Alliance. Between them they have over 50 years of industry experience.

Jeremy Stopher, MD of SCMF, has been open about his desire to step back from the day to day running of the business since he sold to HgCapital in 2013, and the formation of the Eastern Alliance facilitates this. He will remain full-time to oversee the transition, and then in due course will step back and fulfil a part-time consultancy role focusing on customer experience and loyalty.

Similarly, Charles Jonathan, one of the original founders of GMF, has elected to use the opportunity to focus on a variety of interests and give some focus to his property business. Charles will assist during the transition to Steve McCann and then take up a consultancy role to the group, focusing on mergers and acquisitions, mentoring and leading due diligence projects.

A new appointment to the group leadership team is Dan Williams who joins in February as commercial director. Williams is currently category director with Saint Gobain, a leading international building material distributor and manufacturer with sales of £35 billion and nearly 200,000 employees worldwide. He will lead the investment and alignment in category management, pricing, and procurement across all the four businesses ensuring the Alliances create a leading product offer, intelligently positioned and priced to gives customers best quality and value.

Peter Sephton brings more than 30 years of senior multi-national business experience, and joined the Group after 16 years of senior executive experience as president of Brady EMEA. Brady is a NYSE listed multi-national distributor and manufacturer of identification and safety related products and systems with revenue of US$1.5 billion and 7,000 employees. In EMEA Peter ran 29 companies in nine different countries. He is also non-exec director of Constantine Group PLC, which owns businesses in specialist logistics, property and renewable energy.

Michael Murray, who joined the business over a year ago from Rentokil Initial PLC, continues as group chief financial officer. Michael’s previous roles and experience includes CFO with services provider GSL, and 14 years with TNT Express, latterly as group CFO based in Amsterdam handling a six billion euro turnover.

Sephton heralded the restructure as an essential first step, positioning the group to continue its growth into 2014 and beyond: “This is a genuinely exciting time for the two new Alliances, our four brands, our employees and our customers. It will also provide outstanding opportunities for the personal growth of our colleagues as we connect our people and give added focus to best practice – a cornerstone of our strategy of local strength and a unified operating model.”