Rich Hume has characterised his six years leading TD Synnex as “the greatest privilege of my professional career” after announcing he is to retire.
Hume will pass the CEO baton to current COO Patrick Zammit on 1 September, the $56bn-revenue distributor confirmed in a statement today.
Here we round up five key highlights from Hume’s tenure (which began when it was still ‘Tech Data’).
1. Praised as “perfect CEO” upon appointment
Tech Data’s top team believed they’d “found the perfect CEO” in Hume when they gave him the nod to succeed the late Robert Dutkowsky in June 2018.
Hume joined the distributor as its COO in 2016 following a 30-year stint at IBM. This meant he was at (but not leading) Tech Data during its mega acquisition of rival Avnet in 2017.
“He’s very collaborative, approachable,” Dutkowsky reportedly said at the time of Hume’s elevation to the top job. “He’s very decisive, and he makes decisions based on facts and data. He’s a really great team builder.”
2. ‘Random question’
Although not necessarily known for his flamboyance, Hume stood out from the average CEO of a listed tech giant by occasionally showing a bit of personality on social media.
He once asked his followers on LinkedIn a ‘random question’ about which music genre they would choose to listen to for the rest of time, as well as what travel destination they would have on their bucket list.
He’s also not averse to joining in with the odd social media craze (see below).
3. Private life
Back to business… Two years into Hume’s tenure as CEO, Tech Data was taken off the stock market by Apollo Global Management.
Hume characterised moving to private ownership as the “next chapter” for Tech Data, stressing at the time that Apollo had a “track record of building great businesses in our sector”. Private equity hadn’t been overly interested in distribution before this, giving the deal an extra significance.
The deal – which was completed three months into the global pandemic – handed Tech Data an enterprise value of around $6bn and included a $3.75bn equity investment made by Apollo.
4. Outstripping Ingram
It wasn’t long before Tech Data returned to the stock market, however, as it merged in September 2021 with publicly listed rival Synnex to assume its current moniker.
The move created the world’s largest distributor (toppling Ingram), with Hume once again backed to run the enlarged company.
Apollo held onto a 45% stake of the NYSE-listed firm.
“It’s an honour to lead TD SYNNEX with a talented team of 22,000 co-workers worldwide,” Hume said at the time.
5. Passing it onto Patrick
Given his own rise from COO to CEO, Hume’s move to promote TD Synnex veteran Zammit to COO in January was widely seen as a prelude to a full-blown succession.
Today’s news was, therefore, about as unexpected as a reference to AI at a vendor event.
Hume today branded Zammit – who joined Avnet in 1993 – as “the right leader to build on this foundation”.
Zammit led the European region beginning in 2017, following Tech Data’s acquisition of Avnet Technology Solutions. His role expanded in 2021 to include responsibilities for the APJ region.
“Under his leadership, I am confident that TD SYNNEX will reach even greater heights,” Hume concluded.
