After more than 15 years of growth and expansion for Eaton Corp., CEO Alexander Cutler will retire next spring, the company’s board of directors said Tuesday.
Cutler, more widely referred to as Sandy, will retire at the end of May 2016, having reached the company’s mandatory retirement age of 65.
Cutler has helped grow Eaton since taking over as its CEO in August 2000, leading the company into new areas of power management and, in turn, increasing total sales and the sheer size of the company — up 88% and 43% during just the last four years, respectively, to $22.6 billion and 102,000 employees, in large part because of the 2012 acquisition of Irish electrical equipment supplier Cooper Industries.
“He focuses on a strategic vision,” former Key CEO Henry Meyer, who worked closely with Cutler in and around northeast Ohio, said in a 2011 interview. “Not just for the moment, but for where things are going … and where they should be going.”
Cutler worked for Cutler-Hammer from 1975 to 1977, when it was purchased by Eaton. He has worked in a variety of positions for Eaton since, including as the company’s COO from 1995 to 2000.
Craig Arnold, 55, vice chairman, president and COO of the company’s industrial sector since 2009, will succeed Cutler in the top spot. He has worked for Eaton since 2000, and held several senior leadership positions within General Electric before then.
Eaton also announced that Uday Yadav, president of the aerospace group will succeed Arnold as COO in September; that Arnold and CFO Richard Fearon will be appointed to the board in September; and that Thomas Gross, vice chairman, president and COO of the electrical sector, will retire at the end of August and be succeeded by Revathi Advaithi, currently the president of the electrical Americas region.
Eaton works primarily works with electrical, hydraulic and mechanical power, and sells products to customers in more than 175 countries.
