Keeping an Eye on Technology Futures, No Hidden Agendas, New Attitudes, No Platitudes!
Someone on the weblog said of Invensys, "The more things change, the more they stay the same". CEO Ulf Henricksson has just appointed Paulett Eberhart CEO & President of Invensys Process Systems (IPS).
Ken Brown, who had been in the position since the sudden exit of Mike Caliel about a half-year ago, was supposedly one of 3 internal candidates vying for the job and he was unaccountably bypassed. Foxboro loyalists are clearly disappointed, and are wondering what changes this new chief will bring.
With a long background in EDS (computer services), Ms. Eberhart (52) has more of a financial background, with no experience whatsoever in the industrial automation and process controls business. Seems like yet another deja vu experience for fatigued Foxboro.
After being left to manage a too-heavy debt-burden, Ulf has put Invensys on a somewhat reasonable financial footing again. My guess is that he is preparing for his own graceful exit by selling off Invensys for more than its current market value - still a mediocre GBP 2.4B ($4.7B), about 1:1 with annual revenue. Keeping Ken Brown in the role of President would have meant that the objective was to complete the hard-slog of returning to stability. Bringing in an outside bean-counter can only mean polishing the business to prepare for a sell-off.
Another move, more sensible and long overdue, was the exit of Peter Tompkins as President of Eurotherm. He was replaced by Jeff Green who was VP of Manufacturing at Process Systems and previously with Flowserve Pumps. Eurotherm is still handled separately within the group, probably because it has only legacy temperature control widget products and is worth more as a divestiture.
Whoever buys Invensys will be buying it for Foxboro (installed customer-base and market presence), Wonderware (Archestra), Triconex and other good parts of Process Systems. Any likely buyer will simply sell off Rail Systems, Eurotherm and other non-related business for whatever they can fetch.
For an acquisition of this size, the only possible buyers are large, overlapping competitors: Siemens & Schneider (who need more process control); Honeywell (unlikely, because they're a direct competitor, and Process Systems is itself just a segment); Emerson (possible, though unlikely, because they're a direct competitor and don't need Foxboro); GE (unlikely, because Jeff Immelt is off buying other more juicy businesses); Yokogawa or Omron (unlikely, because the Japanese don't know how to accomplish acquisitions of this size). Who else? Your guess is as good as mine.
