Service Point "Corporate" - Change in Management ???

On March 1, 2010, SP issued a press release to say that SP has hired a new “Group Managing Director.” (see below). The name of the new guy is “Tony” Foley.

When I checked Service Point’s corporate (Spain) web-site and hit the tab for the “management team” and the tab for the “board of directors”, I found no mention of Rafael Lopez-Aparicio Areilza.

When I checked Service Points’ UK web-site and hit the tab for board of directors (of the SP UK operation), I found Rafael listed there …. And it says this about Rafael:

“Rafael López-Aparicio Areilza - Global Operations Director since 2001 
Service Point Solutions, S.A.”

But, it may well be that the SP UK web-site has not been “updated” for the change in management. (Or, maybe, Rafael is still on the board of the SP UK operation.)

Note that on Hoovers.com, Rafael is (still today) listed as the “CEO” of SP.

The “$64,000 questions” are …. is Rafael gone “completely” from SP, or is he still with SP, but simply, because of an oversight, no longer mentioned as a member of the management team or board?

If Rafael is gone from SP, let me be one of the first to congratulate him on his retirement from SP and on his terrific accomplishments as the former CEO of the 2nd largest reprographics enterprise in the world. He’s a good guy.

HERE’S PART OF THE PRESS RELEASE SP ISSUED:

1 March 2010.- Service Point Solutions, S.A (ticker: SPS.MC) announces the hire of Anthony, or Tony, Foley, as the company’s Group Managing Director. In this newly created position, Tony will be responsible for the day-to-day management of Service Point’s business with primary focus on the development of the unified sales, marketing, service and customer policy put in place by the company in 2009 which prioritises the AEC, corporate, finance, education and public sector segments.

Before coming to work at Service Point, Tony was Senior Vice President of International Sales and Worldwide Operations at Quest Software, a company he joined in 2000. Under his leadership, the software maker’s international business jumped from $13mn to $320mn.

Before working at Quest, Tony headed up the Southern European business of Computer Associates between 1995 and 2000, where he coordinated sales and marketing policy, with a stint before that in General Electric in corporate and business development at GE Capital.

At Service Point Tony’s main mission is to boost the company’s multilocal strategy while speeding up development of the group’s integrated approach to customer, service and operational strategy.

Mirroring Service Point’s international footprint and the fact that of 90% of revenue is generated outside Spain, Tony will be based in London.

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Joel's added note about Tony: I think I read somewhere that Tony previously worked for HP's large-format business. If that's true, then he does have at least some exposure to the reprographics industry.

CORRECTION: Rafael pointed out to me, in an e-mail on March 26th, that Tony (to the best of Rafael's knowledge) did not previously work for HP. Hmmm, I guess that means that Tony does not have any reprographics industry experience. In addition, Rafael's e-mail pointed out that Tony was brought in to lead SP's Sales effort. (I seriously hope someone gives Tony the short-course in reprographics; how the industry works, how businesses make money, blah, blah, blah.)