Exclusive Group Transforms Leadership Team

Julien Antoine appointed Vice President EMEA; Will Smith named as Chief Information Officer

PARIS, FRANCE – March 07th 2017 – Exclusive Group, the value-added services and technologies (VAST) group, announced today that it has restructured the business to exploit continued global growth and opportunities with two key promotional appointments. Julien Antoine, currently Group Director of Global Operations is taking the new position of VP of EMEA while Will Smith, currently Group IT Director increases his scope to become Group CIO.

Julien Antoine’s new remit as VP of EMEA recognises the need for increased scale and support to the Group’s largest operating region, enabling the structure to flex and adapt to the challenges of a fast changing billion euro business unit. The promotion of Will Smith as CIO, recognises the importance of the Group’s digital transformation and the significance of IT and data intelligence in this journey.

These enhancements to Exclusive Group’s leadership team complement the recent high-profile appointments of Stéphane Duplaix as Director of Strategic Global Alliances, and David Ellis as Group Director of Global Services. The senior leadership team now benefits from a wealth of successful entrepreneurialism, diversity and know how in building a highly agile global business structure, designed to deliver local value.

“Our long-term success has always been centred on the ability to anticipate and adapt to disruption without diluting any of our value, and these important new positions will safeguard these unique strengths as we scale to new levels,” said Barrie Desmond, COO of Exclusive Group. “Julien and Will bring huge energy and talent to the team and are fully committed to our VAST mission. These moves also recognise that we need to transform ourselves as well as transforming technology consumption and distribution if we are to maintain our disruptive position.”

“We are the only major VAD to be headquartered in Europe, and EMEA will always remain an important part of our growing global operations,” said Julien Antoine. “Our value-adding principles are absolutely central to our continuing market relevance and our future growth throughout the region. There are exciting opportunities ahead as we continue to expand our services capabilities as well as market presence for Exclusive Networks and BigTec.”

“The Group IT function has doubled in recent years, making us well-positioned at the forefront of digital disruption to ensure we are creating value internally, and for customers, partners and vendors,” said Will Smith. “Customer requirements are constantly evolving and we must continually address these while remaining efficient and easy to work with. I firmly believe that if you are not disrupting then you risk being disrupted.”