While CompuDyne and Siemens are well known to the inside-the-beltway crowd, perhaps fewer are intimately familiar with The Gores Group, a private equity firm with ownership stakes in 15 portfolio companies and a focus on high technology investments.
One of The Gores Group’s portfolio companies is CompuDyne, an industry leader in advanced technology integration for the Homeland Security market with more than 900 employees worldwide. In July of this year James O’Neill – formerly president of Northrop Grumman Corporation’s $4.5 billion Information Technology sector – took over as CEO of CompuDyne. And while the CompuDyne opportunity no doubt appealed to O’Neill, one could gather from his interview with ExecutiveBiz shortly after taking the helm that it was the entrepreneurial mission of The Gores Group and management style of Founder, Chairman and CEO Alec Gores in particular that O’Neill found most compelling.
The admiration appears to be mutual, as O’Neill’s role with The Gores Group is about to get a whole lot more interesting. Earlier this month O’Neill was named CEO at Siemens Enterprise Communications, a newly-created joint venture between The Gores Group and Siemens AG. With the move, O’Neill will continue to play a vital role within The Gores Group, and his decades of experience leading complex organizations will be put to work heading up the firm’s largest and most significant acquisition to date.
According to the press release, “O’Neill’s priorities will include merging the Siemens Enterprise Communications business with two of Gores’ current portfolio companies — Enterasys, a network equipment and security solutions provider and SER Solutions, a call center software company”
