Background: During the late 1990’s, a large, privately-held industrial engineering and construction company acquired the wire line engineering and installation contract of a “Baby Bell” service provider.
Challenge: Unfortunately, the company did not have the leadership to either execute the contract profitably or to leverage the contract into further business. The $25 million business was floundering. RSMR was tasked to identify and recruit an individual who could take over the contract and build the business through strategic acquisition.
Action: RSMR sat down with the company’s executive management team and ascertained the nature of the business, the difficulties in finding acquisition prospects, and embarked on a search targeting several other telecommunications professionals who had the proven experience to grow the business organically as well as through acquisition.
Resolution: Despite the limited talent pool, RSMR identified a superb up-and-coming young executive with outstanding professional credentials and a track record of success. Our finalist proceeded to evaluate the existing business and identify several strategic areas for the parent company to penetrate. He rapidly identified a suitable acquisition target and completed the acquisition within one year of taking over the business. With this acquisition, our client became the largest provider of telecommunications services in the industry according to Engineering News Record. During the next several years the telecommunications industry changed rapidly, so our placement repositioned the business several times by selling off business units that were not performing or were non-core assets. He continued to grow the core business in key industry sectors – such as in wireless communications – to keep the company on track, which ultimately helped lead to the sale of the business to a much larger publicly traded organization in the same industry. His focus on maintaining reliable profits was crucial to the overall success of the entire business.
