Electrical Marketing's LiveWire

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Integrated Electrical Services Inc. (Houston): James Lindstrom is now interim CEO and president, succeeding Michael Caliel, who will be leaving the company effective June 30 to pursue other interests. In other executive changes at IES, Thomas Santoni, previously V.P., Central Division, Commercial & Industrial, has been promoted to the position of president, IES Commercial & Industrial. Santoni joins fellow divisional presidents, Donald Fishstein, IES Communications and Dwayne Collier, IES Residential. Santoni has been with IES for 16 years, serving in various management positions in the commercial and industrial businesses. He attended the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana. Details

Even EVs’ biggest fans sometimes have their vehicles conk out. According to this GreenTech Media report, after swapping stories during a conference presentation about how their EVs had occasionally run out of power on the road, two pro-EV speakers at the recent Charged 2011 Conference on electric vehicles got stranded in their EVs leaving the conference.

To build on its base as the second-largest player in an industry that’s expected to grow 44 percent to $94.4 billion by 2016, Osram Sylvania will continue acquiring other lighting companies and pumping millions into R&D. According to this Reuters article, Wolfgang Dehen, Osram’s CEO, said the company would continue spending an average of 5.5 percent of sales on R&D, slightly less than what market leader Royal Philips Electronics NV spends annually on R&D. The Reuters report said Dehen told reporters at a recent press conferences in Munich, “The lighting business will see dramatic changes like we’ve not seen in the past 30 years. If you look at what we did in the past, that’s going to be a good indicator going forward.”

Leviton Manufacturing Co. Inc. (Melville, N.Y.): Peter Kleinman is now director of marketing for Leviton’s distribution channel and will report to William Marshall the company’s senior V.P. of sales and marketing,. Kleinman will lead the marketing, branding and advertising for the company’s full line of products across the distribution sales channel.

In a career spanning more than 20 years with Leviton, Kleinman has served as senior designer for the marketing communications department where he produced the company’s first electronic catalog in 1992; manager of creative and production services for the commercial/industrial division where he named and help market the launch of the Evr-Green Electric Vehicle Charger line; and marketing communications manager for distribution.
Before joining Leviton, he worked for Esquire and National Lampoon magazines; as V.P. of marketing at Sekani Inc., where he built and ultimately sold a company that provided content via the web efficiently for Fortune 500 companies. Kleinman majored in communications and advertising at Pratt Institute, and will be based at Leviton’s corporate headquarters.

This Finanical Times report says Schneider Electric wants to bolster its smart-grid business with a $2 billion bid for Telvent, a Spanish software and services company.

Fulham North America (Hawthorne, Calif.): Patrick O’Neal is now regional sales manager for the Southeastern United States. He has is a 25-year industry veteran with extensive rep, regional sales management and electrical distribution experience working for Graybar, Hubbell, Leviton, OZ Gedney and the Bailey/Martin sales agency. O’Neal will be responsible for all Fulham activities with full-line and specialty distributors in Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Texas and Florida.

Find out which electrical distributors have grown the fastest over the past year in one of the toughest economies the electrical market has ever seen in the first podcast for “Take Five! with Electrical Wholesaling,” a series of free podcasts that will be broadcast monthly in 2011, starting on June 7. Upcoming podcasts in 2011 will cover potential sales opportunities in solar, electric vehicles, LED lighting and more. For information on sponsoring the Take Five! Podcast Series click here.

Eaton Corp., Cleveland, has been on the watch lists of many investors over the past few years because of the rapid growth of its stock price, particularly since the March 2008 market bottom. This Motley Fool posting analyzes Eaton Corp.. Cleveland, as an investment opportunity.

Van Meter Industrial, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was been selected by The ESOP Association as the 2011 ESOP Company of the Year. The award was presented at the Association’s 34th Annual Conference in Washington, DC.
Van Meter Industrial is a strong supporter of employee ownership and The ESOP Association. and the company’s employee-owns take an active role in the Iowa/Nebraska Chapter of the Association and participate in Chapter meetings, present programs at these events, write articles for Association publications, and participate in Employee Ownership Month activities every October.
In addition to Association activities, the company also hosts several of their own including: Guess the Value Contest, in which every employee owner has a chance to guess the company’s stock value; an Annual ESOP Statement Roundtable to educate employee owners in all locations; and a Work 10 Years and Get 5 Free Years which helps employee owners understand more about the ESOP and think about their future with the company.