Last year, Mark Snider shared the No. 8 Top Newsmaker position with Charlie Spano of Ingram Micro Canada. This year Snider, who took control of the Canadian operation in June, is all alone at No. 11.
And it was on June 11th, when a memo from the desk of Keith Bradley, Ingram Micro’s North American president, changed his career. He was named sole general manager of the distributor.
The tandem GM experiment was essentially over. In that memo, Bradley said Snider had done an outstanding job of driving profitable growth with Canadian customers as well as contributing to improved vendor management performance this year.
But little did he know how far the tandem GMs would split. Shortly after this announcement, Spano, after a 13-year-long tenure at Ingram Micro Canada, resigned from the company to take on a new career opportunity at CanWest Global as its vice-president of finance.
The tandem GM experiment lasted for only eight months. The experiment may not have lasted long, but it was a success. The subsidiary has been a shining light around the world for Ingram Micro and the decision to end the tandem GMs and have one leader was all about speed of execution, according to Bradley. Snider told CDN at the time that even he was slightly surprised that it ended.