Eaglepoint Hires Former Polaroid CEO
DiCamillo to build out Eaglepoint's business on the East Coast
January 26, 2010
As first reported by IDD, San Francisco-based restructuring advisory firm Eaglepoint Advisors has established an East Coast presence by hiring Gary DiCamillo as a partner.
DiCamillo, who has served as chairman and chief executive of Polaroid and president of Black & Decker's power tools division, began his new position on Jan. 4. He is based in Boston and also works out of the New York office of Kurt Salmon Associates, which employs over 400 consultants and has a strategic alliance with Eaglepoint.
Gary DiCamilloEaglepoint was established late last year by senior managing partners Peter Harris, David Chamberlain and Joe Alouf to serve middle-market retail and consumer product companies. Harris has overseen turnarounds of the National Football League's San Francisco 49ers franchise, FAO Schwarz and Gemco; Chamberlain led restructurings of Genesco and Stride Rite; and Alouf was in charge of the financial restructuring group at Prudential Capital.
DiCamillo was president and CEO of Radia International, an engineering staffing and outsourcing company, from 2002-2009. He served as chairman and CEO of Polaroid from 1995-2002 (where he helped sell the company to JPMorgan's One Equity Partners) and as president of Black & Decker from 1986-1995.
DiCamillo began his career as a brand manager at Procter & Gamble from 1975-1980 and later worked as an engagement manager at McKinsey & Co. from 1980-1983. While at McKinsey, DiCamillo worked on restructurings of several clients, and left to join one of those clients, water filtration and treatment solutions provider Culligan USA, where he was a vice president and general manager from 1983-1986. While at Culligan, he helped establish the company's bottled water retail business.
DiCamillo, who graduated from Harvard Business School with an MBA and from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a BS in chemical engineering, serves on the boards of Whirlpool Corp. and 3Com Corp. He is also a member of the boards of trustees of Rensselaer, the Massachusetts Business Roundtable, Boston's Museum of Science and Babson College.
DiCamillo has known Chamberlain for 10 years. That existing relationship, along with Eaglepoint's partnership with a 400-consultant firm like Kurt Salmon, were the major reasons DiCamillo decided to join Eaglepoint, he tells IDD.
Chamberlain and DiCamillo declined to discuss Eaglepoint's pipeline, but they did say the firm is receiving interest from private-equity firms which do not have operating partners and require assistance with portfolio companies. Eaglepoint's clients tend to be private, medium-sized companies.
Eaglepoint expects an uptick in business as the year goes on. "There's a bit of a lull in the marketplace now because the stock market has come back well, but when we come out of the stimulus year and start seeing the tax increases and the likely second dip, we expect to exceed our capacity," says DiCamillo. "There was a lot of restructuring last year, so costs are lower as we come into this year, but if the economy starts to falter or sales don't increase there will be a lot of demand for the services we provide."
Companies which cut costs last year may find that those measures were not enough. "The issue this year will be whether their top-line turnarounds are commensurate with profit improvement," says Chamberlain. "The question will be whether their business models will be sustainable now that cost-cutting has been implemented."
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