Proact IT Group AB has a new leader at the top, at least for now. Jason Clark resigned as chief executive on February 1, 2018, and the board named Peter Javestad acting CEO. The Swedish company announced the change the same day. It has also started a search for a permanent CEO.
Clark had run the group for two busy years. He took over on January 8, 2016, and during his time the company grew strongly and stayed very profitable, according to the board. Before that, he was in charge of Proact UK. He had led that business since 2001, and he stayed on after Proact bought it six years before his exit.
Under Clark, Proact built a data center and cloud operation that made money. It ran alongside the older business of selling IT systems. The board thanked him for that work.
Javestad is no newcomer. He has sat on the group management team since 2004. Over the years he has served as regional manager, vice president of services and vice president of sales and marketing. The board said it was confident that his experience and commitment, together with the staff, would let him carry out the strategy the company had already shared with the market.
That strategy is simple enough. Proact wants to give customers secure, cost-effective IT operations built on current technology. It sells systems with related services, and it also runs IT operations as a service. The service side keeps growing, while classic system sales remain a core part of the offer.
Proact describes itself as the leading independent data center and cloud services provider in Europe. It has completed more than 5,000 projects and has over 3,500 customers. It also manages more than 100 petabytes of data in the cloud. The group employs more than 800 people in 15 countries in Europe and in the USA.
The company was founded in 1994. Its parent, Proact IT Group AB, has been listed on Nasdaq Stockholm since 1999 under the symbol PACT. Because the news counted as inside information under EU market abuse rules, it went out at 8 a.m. CET on the day Clark left.
