Paul Cook, managing director of Acer UK, has revealed to CRN that his decision to leave the company had been on the cards for some time.
After four and a half years at Acer UK, Cook announced his resignation at the end of last month, citing ‘basic differences in the business model’ as the reason behind his decision (CRN, 30 January). Semmy Levit, head of Acer UK’s notebook division, will now take over the reins at Acer UK as country manager.
Speaking exclusively to CRN, Cook said: “I’m going to be conn-ected to Acer for another few months but will hand over a lot of [my commercial duties] to Semmy now.”
He added. “It was something I’d been planning for three to six months – it was not an overnight decision. While we agreed on what Acer should be doing, we didn’t entirely agree on how Acer should get there. I believed in the ‘what’ but not the ‘how’ and I believe you shouldn’t stick around if you don’t agree on the ‘how’.”
Cook declined to reveal his exact plans for the future, but said he currently has “things underway”.
Alastair Edwards, senior analyst at Canalys, said: “Acer has done a great job, in both the retail and business-to business sectors, but it has got to think about how it will maintain its growth momentum. It has a very strong
distribution model, but the level of satisfaction among its distributors is very different now to 12 months ago. This is partly due to the level of stock they’ve been asked to hold.”
Paul Graham, managing director of online reseller Excite IT, said: “It’s a genuine shame that Paul feels inclined to leave considering the tremendous job he’s done for Acer since joining them in 2001. Semmy Levit will have a tough job following in his footsteps.”
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