Eck to Succeed Grubbs as Anixter CEO

Jason Sandefur

Robert Grubbs will retire as president and CEO of Anixter International Inc. at the end of June 2008. Grubbs, who has held those posts since 1998 and has been with Anixter for 30 years, will continue to serve on the company’s board of directors.
Anixter COO Robert Eck, 49, will succeed Grubbs. Eck has been with Anixter for 17 years, holding senior management positions, including executive vice president of Enterprise Cabling and Security Solutions (2004-2007) and senior vice president – Physical Security Products and Integrated Supply.
After promising in 2005 to build a world-class fastener business, Anixter acquired UK-based Infast Group (2005); Italian fastener distributor MFU Holding SpA (2006); aerospace fastener distributor Eurofast SAS (2007); and UK-based fastener distributor Total Supply Solutions Ltd. (2007). The companies became part of Anixter Fasteners, which includes Anixter Pentacon, Walters Hexagon and Distribution Dynamics.
Anixter Fasteners’ 2,000 employees provide more than 185,000 products from 75 facilities in the U.S., UK, Canada, France and Italy.
Sales for Glenview, IL-based Anixter topped $5.85 billion in 2007, including 13.7% revenue growth to $4.1 billion in North America. \ �2008 FastenerNews.com