The changing of executive leadership at Menomonee Falls-based Actuant Corp. continued this week as the company announced Ted Wozniak, executive vice president for corporate development, will retire at the end of the calendar year.
The company plans to collaboratively manage its development activities across its segment and corporate organizations. Those activities include mergers and acquisitions, strategy and inorganic growth initiatives pipeline development, strategic evaluation, deal structure, valuation, due diligence and negotiation.
“M&A and portfolio management are key strategic aspects to achieving our 2021 vision,” said Randy Baker, Actuant president and chief executive officer. “The changes to our corporate development function represent another step in the streamlining and simplification of functional leadership at Actuant, while strengthening the execution and success of our inorganic growth strategies.”
The company said Wozniak’s departure is part of a planned departure, but he is also the fifth executive to leave the company in the last year in addition to longtime chief executive Robert Arzbaecher stepping down from the board in January.
Andrew Lampereur, the company’s longtime chief financial officer, left at the end of 2016 and was replaced by current CFO Rick Dillon.
In September, Ken Bockhorst, Actuant energy segment executive vice president, left to become chief operating officer at Brown Deer-based Badger Meter Inc. Rich Meeusen, Badger Meter CEO, suggested on a recent earnings call that Bockhorst could be in line to be the company’s next chief executive.
At the same time as the Bockhorst announcement, Actuant also said Eugene Skogg, executive vice president for human resources, had left the company. Andre Williams, previously vice president for human resources in the industrial and engineered solutions segments, was promoted to Skogg’s former position.
A week after the Bockhorst anouncement, Baker announced that Actuant would be combining the leadership of its energy and industrial segments and Stephen Rennie, the industrial segment executive vice president, would be leaving the company. The company is engaged in a search for a new leader of the combined segments.
Actuant went from having seven named executives in its October 2016 annual securities filing to just four in the 2017 version filed Thursday. Roger Roundhouse, executive vice president for engineered solutions, is now the only executive who was with the company before Baker became CEO in March 2016.
