Total chaos. A damaged image for the company, drivers who left through a side door, an investigation by the judicial authorities. The situation that Peter Wakkie found in 2003 at the Ahold, which was plagued by an accounting scandal, does not appear to be all that different from that at the company he is now to lead: IT service provider Centric.
Just think: the automation company that works for many (lower) governments has a huge trust problem. The private antics of owner Gerard Sanderink were a reason for a number of important customers (ASML, De Nederlandsche Bank, Bank Nederlandse Gemeenten) not to renew the expiring contract. And Sanderink dismissed drivers who contradicted him.
The public interest of the company for governments and as an employer of 2,500 people in the Netherlands ultimately prompted the Public Prosecution Service to ask the Enterprise Chamber to start an investigation into mismanagement. This happened after Sanderink announced a few weeks ago that he would return as CEO at Centric. The Enterprise Chamber has yet to rule on whether there will be an investigation into mismanagement, but last week it already suspended Sanderink as director. Its share capital was also placed at a distance. Marcel Evers will manage the documents.
Thursday announced the Enterprise Chamber that Wakkie will start working as a director at Centric. He will be joined by Willem Meijer as a non-executive director.
Blocked takeover of KPN
With Wakkie, Centric gets a flamboyant director who is regarded as the oil man in the administrative Netherlands. The former lawyer (De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek) has appeared several times at companies that were in difficulty. Between 2003 and 2009, he guided Ahold through legal claims from investors and fines with regulators. He helped the multinational survive the accounting storm.
At KPN, Wakkie was a member of the foundation that had to watch over the survival of the company. With that foundation he blocked the takeover of KPN by the Mexican America Movil. Wakkie was also chairman of the supervisory board at, among others, WoltersKluwer and TomTom.
Also read: Enterprise Chamber refuses to give Centric CEO Sanderink his ‘support’
It became clear in 2015 that he is not afraid to speak up. Then he had to leave ABN Amro after he had NRC defended a controversial salary increase for the board of directors. Under pressure from the state, which at that time was still the full owner, the board itself had refrained from doing so.
Wakkie is on a list of directors at the Enterprise Chamber who can be engaged to put things in order at companies. It is therefore not the first time that the Enterprise Chamber has met Wakkie. At the Spanish-Russian telecom company ZED+ – based in the Netherlands – he had to solve the financial problems that arguing shareholders could not fix. That turned out differently: a disgruntled Spanish shareholder family sued Wakkie itself for allegedly thwarting an external investigation into possible bribery by the Russian part of the group. The family got into trouble several times at the Enterprise Chamber when they tried to get Wakkie fired. Later, Wakkie, as a supervisory director of the South African furniture company Steinhoff, which had been hit by an accounting fraud scandal, put things in order. Directors had cheated with the bookkeeping and Wakkie was once again able to live up to his reputation as a debris clearer.
Meanwhile, the former lawyer maintains his own practice, with which he boardrooms advises how to deal with crises. In recent years he has been sparring with many commissioners of companies in trouble. Preferably anonymously, out of the spotlight.
That won’t work with Centric. The media attention for the company is great because of Sanderink’s behaviour. Sanderink’s girlfriend Rian van Rijbroek played a major role in the negative publicity. Last week she confirmed in court the news brought by NRC that she advised on setting up a cybersecurity division at the IT service provider. It caused a lot of unrest among customers and staff.
Van Rijbroek’s involvement was also the reason why staff left Centric. The company is currently spending a lot of money on temporary hiring and the acquisition of new customers. Centric is currently in the red. Wakkie’s first task is to keep any association with Van Rijbroek outside the door and to bring peace back to the automation company. “We notice that the appointment of new directors has immediately removed part of the unrest among the staff,” Wakkie said in a response to NRC on Friday. “We would like to restore the relationship with customers. They do have a lot of confidence in the services provided by Centric itself, we hear.”
The manager of his shares, Marcel Evers, has not yet had any contact with Gerard Sanderink. “That will undoubtedly happen in the future. But I am not bound by any voting instructions from Mr Sanderink. The interests of the company come first.”