Worthy Hiring Former Sonepar Execs

Richard Worthy, president of the newly formed U.S. Electrical Services LLC (USESI), is getting together some of the players from his old band at Sonepar.

Worthy, who was CEO of Sonepar North America before starting USESI, Chester Springs, Pa., is hiring some of the same industry executives who helped him build Sonepar into one of the fastest-growing distributors in the history of the electrical industry.

The roster of new hires who were part of Worthy’s old team includes:

Greg Griswold was recently named president, Mid-Atlantic region. He was president of Sonepar’s Cooper Electric Supply, Tinton Falls, N.J., during Worthy’s reign as CEO. Griswold joined USESI from WESCO Distribution.

Carl Brand was appointed regional president for the Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island markets. He was previously president of Sonepar’s NorthEast Electrical/Eagle Electric Supply and a senior executive with his family’s business, Standard Electric Supply, Wilmington, Mass.

Randy Moore was recently appointed president of USESI’s Florida region. Florida opens a new geography for the company. Moore joins USESI from Sonepar USA where he was vice president of operations for the World Electric division.

Other senior executives from the electrical business now on Worthy’s USESI team include:

John Reznick, who was appointed president of Electrical Wholesalers. In addition to managing Electrical Wholesalers’ 22 locations in Connecticut, Reznick will seek to expand into western Massachusetts and eastern New York. Reznick was vice president of sales at Electrical Wholesalers. His other industry experience includes a management post with Hartford Electric Supply Co. (HESCO), West Hartford, Conn.

Arthur Namerow, former co-owner of Electrical Wholesalers, will serve as executive vice president and chairman of USESI’s Vendor Partner Council. In 1980, Namerow and his brother, Robert, assumed ownership of Electrical Wholesalers.

Worthy, who was with GE Capital before coming to Sonepar USA in 1998, led Sonepar on a fast-paced march across North America to more than $1 billion in sales in just seven years. At the time Worthy joined Sonepar, the company had no locations in the United States and a presence in Canada through a 1984 acquisition of Lumec.

Electrical Wholesaling’s 2006 Top 200 listing ranked Sonepar as the seventh largest distributor of electrical supplies in the United States.

Worthy left Sonepar in 2004. When his noncompete clause with Sonepar SA, Paris, expired earlier this year, he quickly began contacting distributors he thought would fit into U.S. Electrical Services.

In recent months, USESI has acquired Wiedenbach-Brown, Westchester County, N.Y.; Electrical Wholesalers, Hartford, Conn.; and Monarch Electric Co., West Caldwell, N.J., and already has 30 locations, primarily in the New England and Mid-Atlantic states. Fueling the growth of USESI is private-equity capital from MSD Capital, the New York-based family office of Michael and Susan Dell of Dell Computer fame; and Kelso, a 30-year-old private-equity company based in New York.