CSC's Riordan Back On Acquisition Hunt in New Role at Harvest Partners
Harvest Partners, New York, has formed a formal partnership with Steve Riordan, former CEO of Communications Supply Corp. (CSC), Carol Stream, Ill., to target one or more investments in North American distribution companies.
As CSC's CEO, Riordan and his management team grew the business organically and through several acquisitions, and then sold the business, a national distributor of network infrastructure, low voltage specialty systems and industrial wire and cable products, to WESCO International Inc., Pittsburgh in November 2006 for $525 million, generating a significant return on invested capital. CSC had been acquired by Harvest and Riordan in May 2004. Prior to the Harvest acquisition, Riordan was CEO and a director of CSC dating back to 1996. He also held senior positions at Chicago-based EESCO Inc., a leading distributor of industrial automation and control products that WESCO purchased in the 1990s.
During his 35-year career in the distribution industry, Riordan helped execute and integrate more than 35 add-on acquisitions. In a press release announcing the acquisition Riordan said, “I'm excited to renew my partnership with the Harvest team and begin a focused search for a new platform opportunity in distribution. My management experience and Harvest's sector-focused approach should prove a strong combination for identifying attractive distribution opportunities.”
Senior executives at Harvest said they believe Riordan can help them expand in the distribution industry. “We are excited to begin the next chapter of partnership with Steve, who has been a proven executive partner for us in the past,” said Michael DeFlorio, Harvest's senior managing director. “We look to replicate our CSC success with further investments in the distribution sector alongside Steve.”
“Our new partnership with Steve builds on our mutual prior experience in the distribution sector, and the sector investment thesis we have developed,” added Michael Cardito, principal at Harvest.” Steve's deep management experience in distribution is a tremendous asset as we look to target and complete our next investment in the industry.”
For more information on Harvest Partners, please visit the web site at www.harvpart.com.
About the Author
Jim Lucy Blog
Chief Editor
Jim Lucy has been wandering through the electrical market for more than 30 years, most of the time as an editor for Electrical Wholesaling, Electrical Marketing newsletter and CEE News. During that time he and the editorial team for the publications have won numerous national awards for their coverage of the electrical business. He showed an early interest in electricity, when as a youth he had an idea for a hot dog cooker. Unfortunately, the first crude prototype malfunctioned and the arc nearly blew him out of his parents' basement. Before becoming an editor for Electrical Wholesaling magazine and Electrical Marketing, he earned a BA degree in journalism and a MA in communications from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ., which is formerly best known as the site of the 1967 summit meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and Russian Premier Aleksei Nikolayevich Kosygin, and now best known as the New Jersey state college that changed its name in 1992 to Rowan University because of a generous $100 million donation by N.J. zillionaire industrialist Henry Rowan. Jim is a Brooklyn-born Jersey Guy happily transplanted in the fertile plains of Kansas for the past 20 years.