Pep Boys execs out after Icahn takeover
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn has tapped a team of Georgia- and Florida-based executives to run his auto-parts group, including his newly acquired Pep Boys stores, garages and warehouses, decapitating the company's former Philadelphia-based top management group.
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Billionaire investor
Carl Icahn
has tapped a team of Georgia- and Florida-based executives to run his auto-parts group, including his newly acquired
Pep Boys
stores, garages and warehouses, decapitating the company's former Philadelphia-based top management group.
New CEO Brent Windom and six of the seven other bosses named to run the combined Pep Boys stores and Auto Plus parts distributors are bosses at Georgia-based Auto Plus.
Among Pep Boys' top executives, only service chief John Holt, who joined the company from Hertz last summer and has worked from an office in Florida, will keep his job for the combined companies, according to a statement from their new headquarters at the Kennesaw, Ga., offices of Auto Plus.
Formerly Auto Plus president and CEO, Windom "will lead the integration of Auto Plus and Pep Boys," according to the statement.
Together, the companies employ more than 20,000 at 27 distribution centers and more than 1,000 retail locations, including 561 Pep Boys store-and-garage Supercenters, 239 Pep Boys stand-alone garages and tire centers, five stand-alone Pep Boys stores, and 265 Auto Plus stores. They also supply more than 530 independent parts stores and 2,400 service garages.
The transfer of power looks like a loss to Philadelphia's small community of big-company headquarters and raises questions about long-term plans for Pep Boys' West Allegheny Avenue office and warehouse complex and 500 local staff members.
Mayor Kenney's administration has been asking Icahn's New York organization what it can do to help keep some Pep Boys operations at its 300,000-square-foot office and warehouse complex or elsewhere in the city. Icahn agreed to buy the chain for $1 billion earlier this winter, outbidding Japan's Bridgestone store chain.
Jane Scaccetti, CEO of the Philadelphia accounting firm Drucker & Scaccetti and a former Pep Boys director, says she has encouraged city officials to use the merger and consolidation as an opportunity to pitch Philadelphia as an attractive back-office center for Icahn operations, including Pep Boys.
"You're not going to attract everything up here from Auto Plus. They built a lot in Georgia," Scaccetti tells me. "But we should think big and see if we could attract more [Auto Plus and Icahn] operations to the city. We're just a train ride to New York, where the heart of his operation is," and where prime office space is up to three times more expensive than in Philadelphia.
A billionaire hedge-fund manager and veteran corporate-takeover artist, Icahn controls or has major investments in dozens of financial, manufacturing and energy companies.
The city is looking for ways to attract a developer that would propose updates to the Pep Boys building, which includes about 100,000 square feet of office space plus the warehouse, and for incentives to help Pep Boys and Icahn operations move to new office space - for example, the growing Navy Yard corporate park.
"We met with them [Icahn/Auto Plus-Pep Boys] last week and will continue to support the company's efforts in every way possible," Sara Merriman, senior director for business attraction and retention at the Philadelphia Commerce Department, tells me.
Besides CEO Windom, other Auto Plus bosses tapped for top jobs include Wade Sharp, who stays on as senior vice president, sales and operations; Pete Bednarzyk, senior vice president, supply; Gary Desai, senior vice president and chief information officer; Mike Englert, chief financial officer; Matt Flannery, general counsel; and Richard Mattiussi, senior vice president, merchandising and marketing.
215-854-5194 @PhillyJoeD