General Electric Co (GE.N) Vice Chairman John Krenicki will join Clayton, Dubilier & Rice at the end of the year, the private equity firm said on Tuesday.
Krenicki will serve as an operating partner at Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, a role where he will work on boosting growth at businesses the firm invests in. He will be joining a company that counts former GE CEO Jack Welch and current GE director and former Procter & Gamble Co (PG.N) CEO Alan Lafley as top advisers.
The pioneering private equity firm had a change at the top this year when founder Joe Rice stepped down at age 80, turning the reins over to Chief Executive Donald Gogel.
GE said earlier this month it planned to break its energy business into three stand-alone units later this year and that Krenicki, who headed the combined business, would be leaving the company at the end of 2012.
Krenicki, 50, is a 29-year veteran of the largest U.S. conglomerate and one of just four GE vice chairmen. The others are Chief Financial Officer Keith Sherin, GE Capital Chief Executive Mike Neal and John Rice, who serves as CEO of GE Global Growth and Operations, overseeing the Fairfield, Connecticut-based company's operations outside the United States.
Krenicki is not the first departing GE executive to move into the world of private equity. When Lloyd Trotter, who headed GE's former Industrial division left the company in 2008 he founded GenNx360 Capital partners, a New York-based private equity firm with investments in industrial components makers.
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