Cognizant names Brian Humphries succeeding Francisco D’Souza

Cognizant announced the appointment of Brian Humphries as its CEO as the IT services company’s CEO and co-founder Francisco D’Souza will step down from the CEO role to become the vice chairman.
Cognizant CEO Brian HumphriesFrancisco D’Souza, who co-founded Cognizant and has served as CEO since 2007, will serve as executive vice chairman to facilitate the transition through June 30, 2019. Thereafter, he will remain on the Board as vice chairman.

Cognizant also announced that Rajeev Mehta will step down as president effective April 1.

The appointment indicates that Cognizant did not find a CEO person among its 282,000 workforce globally and its strong executive leadership. Brian Humphries does not have previous experience from a IT services company though he worked with Vodafone, Dell and HP earlier.

Cognizant’s leadership team includes Karen McLoughlin, chief financial officer; Malcolm Frank, EVP of Strategy & Marketing; Ramakrishnan Chandrasekaran, vice chairman of Cognizant India; Srinivasan Veeraraghavachary, chief operating officer; Debashis Chatterjee, president of Global Delivery; Ramakrishna Prasad Chintamaneni, president of Global Industries and Consulting; Matthew Friedrich, EVP; Sumithra Gomatam, president of Digital Operations; Gajen Kandiah, president of Digital Business; Venkat Krishnaswamy, vice chairman of Healthcare and Life Sciences; James Lennox, chief people officer; Sean Middleton, president of Cognizant Accelerator; Issam Allen Shaheen, EVP of North American Digital Hubs; Dharmendra Kumar Sinha, president of Global Client Services; Robert Telesmanic, chief accounting officer; and Santosh Thomas, president of Global Growth Markets.

Brian Humphries is joining Cognizant from Vodafone Business. As CEO of Vodafone Business, he managed the division that accounted for nearly a third of the Vodafone Group’s service revenue with €12 billion in sales. Humphries previously held leadership positions at global technology leaders Dell and Hewlett-Packard.

Francisco D’Souza’s achievements

# 10x growth in revenues – from $1.42 billion in 2006 to $16.1 billion in 2018

headcount from 39,000 in 2006 to 282,000 in 2018

market value increased more than 400x since its 1998 IPO valuation

D’Souza said: “Cognizant has the strategy and people to deliver innovative technologies and solutions that help our customers realize their full potential in a digital world.”

Brian Humphries joined Vodafone from Dell where he held the position of president and chief operating officer of its Infrastructure Solutions Group, based in Boston and Geneva. Previously, he was president of Dell’s Global Enterprise Solutions, a group with approximately $15 billion in revenue.

Before joining Dell, Humphries was with Hewlett-Packard where his roles included senior vice president, Emerging Markets; senior vice president, Strategy and Corporate Development; and chief of staff to the Chairman and Chief Executive. He also served as chief financial officer of HP Services.

Cognizant revenue

Cognizant reported that its revenue rose 7.9 percent to $4.13 billion in the fourth quarter of 2018. Cognizant’s operating margin was 16.8 percent for the fourth quarter of 2018. Net income of Cognizant was $648 million.

Cognizant generated revenue of $5.845 billion (+3.7 percent) from financial services, $4.668 billion (+9.5 percent) from healthcare, $3.415 billion (+12.3 percent) from products and resources and $2.197 billion (+17.4 percent) from communications, media and technology business units in 2018.

Cognizant has added around 7,400 employees during the fourth quarter of 2018 and 21,600 in 2018, taking the company’s headcount to around 281,600. The company reported annualised attrition of 19 percent during the fourth quarter.

Cognizant added seven strategic customers in the quarter, defined as clients that have the potential to generate at least $5 million to $50 million or more in annual revenue, bringing the total number of strategic clients to 385.

Rajani Baburajan

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