Graham Charlton will take the helm as Chief Executive Officer as Graeme Watt steps into Chair of Board role
Softcat, the leading UK provider of IT infrastructure technology and services, today announces a future organisation change it intends to make to ensure continued effective leadership of Softcat and orderly succession over the medium term.
Graham Charlton will assume the position of Softcat CEO from 1 August next year following eight years as Chief Financial Officer at Softcat. He will succeed Graeme Watt who will become Non-Executive Chair of the Softcat board as Martin Hellawell steps down.
On taking up the role of CEO next year, Graham added: “Softcat is a unique Company made special by its people and culture. The prospects for us and our industry are as strong as ever, and becoming CEO next year will be a privilege and an honour.”
Graeme, who joined Softcat in 2018 and was named in Glassdoor’s Top CEOs list last year, said: “Graham is exactly the right person to take on this role next year. This succession is well planned and thought through to make sure that the high-level performance of the company will be continued into the future. Graham has an intimate knowledge of Softcat and I know he will lead the company well when that time comes and I wish him every success.
“For me, I am excited about transitioning to my new role in a year’s time where I can continue to be involved with the progress of Softcat at board level. But in the meantime, I remain fully engaged and committed in my position as CEO and continuing to drive the business hard for the next twelve months. On behalf of the Board, I would like to thank Martin Hellawell for his outstanding contribution to Softcat over many years.”
Softcat announced internally further changes taking effect from 1 August 2022 which included:
- Richard Wyn Griffith taking up the position of Chief Commercial Officer running vendor alliances, cloud, cloud alliances and marketing. He also picks up responsibility for multi-national sales, customer experience and the ownership of some key strategic areas such as Softcat’s Digital and Data strategies.
- Anthony Cowen has been appointed to the position of Chief Revenue Officer, further consolidating sales ownership. Ant now looks after solutions sales and services sales, as well as existing responsibilities for corporate and public sector sales and sales operations.
Graeme concluded: “These other internal leadership changes set us up perfectly to drive further improvements in alignment, best practice sharing and execution so we can continue to improve and evolve our employee and customer offerings. I wish all our people including Ant and Rich every success in their new roles.”
A search has been launched for a CFO to replace Graham Charlton.