Pulsant Group Limited, specialist hybrid cloud services firm, has announced changes to its board that will see Niclas Sanfridsson succeed Founder Mark Howling as CEO and Brad Petzer replace Graeme Mackenzie as CFO. Founder, Mark will become a Non-Executive Director of the company.
The current CEO of Pulsant, Mark Howling, has been with Pulsant for 7 years, having founded the business in its current form. During this period, revenues have grown from £10m to £75m, and the company continues to have excellent prospects ahead. Having expressed an interest in pursuing additional business opportunities, in the second half of 2016, the Board and Mark agreed to work to identify a new CEO who was able to stay involved with the business over a long-term horizon. This process has now reached a successful conclusion and, with effect from 21st August, Niclas Sanfridsson will become CEO of Pulsant, and Mark will become a non-executive director and remain a major shareholder.
Niclas was until recently Managing Director of Equinix in the Nordic Region, having spent 15 years with TeleCity, TelecityGroup and then more recently Equinix following its acquisition of Telecity. Prior to this he was Sales Director for WorldCom in Sweden and has also worked with Telia Financial Services. He has experience of running businesses offering data centre and managed IT services.
Niclas said, “it is an incredible honour to be asked to become CEO at Pulsant and it is with great pleasure that I have accepted the role. I look forward to working with everyone in Pulsant to continue to build on its success.”
In addition, Graeme Mackenzie, CFO, who has been with Pulsant in one form or another for over 15 years, would now like to take a break from active business and spend more time with his family, pursuing a range of hobbies, sports and other non-work interests. Consequently, following an extensive recruitment process, Brad Petzer will take up the role of CFO for Pulsant on 6th September, 2017.
Brad was until recently CFO at Mercator Solutions, a Warburg Pincus backed software and BPO services provider to the aviation and shipping industries. Prior to this he was CFO at Monitise plc for 3 years, a publicly quoted mobile payments company, and before that he held various senior finance roles at Telecity.
Mark Howling, Pulsant Founder added, “I am very proud of what we have achieved so far at Pulsant, and there are significant market opportunities to enable the business to develop much further. However, now is the right time to bring in a new leader who can take the business through the next phase of its development.”