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Spierkel Signs Off—for Now

Spierkel: “The breadth of roles I’ve had are very hard to come by in today’s environment”

Gregory Spierkel never set out to be Jack Welch.

He preferred the lifestyle of Jack Kerouac.

Spierkel was born in Quebec, Canada, to parents who had emigrated from Belgium and Luxembourg. He spent a good portion of his formative years traveling to Europe in the summers, soaking up the culture and honing his language skills.

Spierkel never reached the linguistic level of his parents−both fluent in at least five languages−but the experiences gave him a fondness for life on the road.

“I didn’t have ambitions to run a company, not at all,” the former chief executive of Santa Ana-based Ingram Micro Corp. told Chapman University students and alumni who crowded a private room at Il Fornaio in Irvine late last month to hear him discuss his tenure leading Orange County’s largest public company.

Spierkel first hit the road when he left Bell Canada to join telecom and chipmaker Mitel Inc., which tapped him in 1986 to set up a factory to produce phones in mainland China.

“I had my break,” Spierkel said.

He spent more than two years building the factory in China while overseeing another in the U.K.

Spierkel took his first U.S.-based job in 1992, when he was promoted to North American president for Mitel and stationed in Washington D.C.

He moved to Ingram in 1997, when he was hired to oversee the company’s Asia-Pacific region, which had 20 employees and chipped in about $50 million in annual revenue at the time

The company’s regional revenue grew to $1.4 billion in two years, thanks in large part to the acquisition of Singapore-based Electronic Resources Ltd., which had operations in 10 countries in the region. Spierkel also played an instrumental role in growing the Asia-Pacific business during his 2004-2005 stint as president of Ingram, when he led its $530 million acquisition of Australia-based Tech Pacific Ltd., the company’s largest buy to date.

Asia-Pacific is now Ingram’s fastest growing market, contributing about 22% of annual sales—just under $800 million last year.

That puts it within sight of the U.S. market, Ingram’s largest with about 42% of sales.

“In a few years it could become the largest region in terms of sheer numbers,” Spierkel said of the Asia-Pacific region. “That’s a big shift for Ingram.”

Spierkel became chief executive of Ingram in 2005, and continued to handle acquisitions. He oversaw 24 during his 15-year run at the company and steered Ingram into a number of new segments including consumer electronics, data capture/point of sale, cloud services and hardware for large companies.

He departs Ingram with good grades from analysts. Other offers have come in, but for now he plans to spend at least a year dedicating more time to his 85-year-old parents in Quebec.

“That’s priority No. 1,” said Spierkel, who announced his resignation in late January. “I’ve stopped largely because of that, to get things squared away.”

Spierkel’s 30-plus years in the industry provided the worldly experiences he sought as a fresh-eyed graduate out of Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.

“The breadth of roles I’ve had are very hard to come by in today’s environment,” he said. “It wasn’t by design. It was all about what can I do to travel and live abroad and hit a few countries and meet people. That was my only objective.”

Mission accomplished—and much more.

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