New CEO of MERLION

March 6 2013, Moscow. The Board of Directors of MERLION (www.merlion.com) resolved to appoint Raskolov Sergey to the position of CEO since March 1, 2013. Personnel changes in the management of the leader of the Russian IT market are associated with new strategic objectives set for the company and its shareholders.

In recent years, MERLION has entered quite a few of new markets having combined different areas of distribution with different principles of forming business processes, patterns of interaction with partners and priorities in development. The new CEO of the company will focus on optimizing the internal structure and the effective development of all areas of distribution within the frames of one and the same company.

Sergey Raskolov was born on June 20, 1965. In 1986 he graduated from the Ryazan Higher Military Command School of Communications named after Marshal M.V. Zakharov. After quitting military service he went into business. In 2003 he complemented his gained practical experience with specialized education, having graduated from the Academy of Entrepreneurship under the Government of Moscow, in the discipline of electronic commerce.

Sergey Raskolov is not a newcomer for MERLION. It was in the company, where his career advancement has taken place. In 2003 he joined the company in the position of Sales Manager, and then he has taken position of a Regional Manager. One year later, Sergey Raskolov has taken position of the Commercial Director of one of MERLION’S structural subdivisions. Since January 2007, Mr. Raskolov has been occupying the position of MERLION Sales Director. He has stayed in this position for more than 5 years, not only having actively increased the sales of the company, but also having successfully developed new, strategically important projects, such as the network of regional offices of the company, which continue to rapidly increase their share in the total turnover of MERLION.

Vyacheslav Simonenko, who had been occupying the position of CEO for 6 years, stays in the group of companies. The company shareholders have highly estimated the results of his work: during his leadership the company has passed through a crisis with minimal loss, increased its key indicators by several times, and entered new segments, taking the leading positions in no time. High professionalism of Vyacheslav Simonenko as a leader who is able to achieve the quality of business growth, and do it fast, is highly appreciated. Within the new concept of development more attention will be paid to strategic projects diversifying the business of shareholders outside the main areas of activity. In the nearest future the new appointment of Vyacheslav Simonenko as a Manager of one of the independent projects of MERLION and strategic tasks set for the project and its new leader will be announced.

Alexey Abramov, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of MERLION commented on the changes in the management of the company as follows: “First of all I would like to note that these changes in the management of the company demonstrate the tremendous success of the company in recent years. We have not only taken a strong position of a market leader in distribution, which is our main business. But we are also aggressively growing in allied spheres, occupying leading positions in all the segments. And today, we just have to distribute our most valuable resources – high-performance managers – between the different activities of the company in order to maintain such a high rates of growth and leading position in the market. I am sure in the next few years our company's development strategy will allow us to be number one in all the IT market segments that we are engaged in, both in Russia and in the CIS countries. And perhaps even beyond these territories. Today, the company is making another evolutionary breakthrough, and I see great prospects for MERLION development”.