Nortek Names Michael J. Clarke President & CEO

Nortek (NASDAQ: NTK), the Providence, R.I.-based parent of many brands in the custom electronics industry, has named Michael J. Clarke as its new president and chief executive officer, effective Dec. 30.

Clarke, who most recently served as group president of integrated network solutions at Singapore-based Flextronics International, takes over for longtime CEO Richard Bready, who retired. Following the transition, interim CEO J. David Smith will return to serving his position on Nortek's board.

Clarke brings 25 years of experience "driving growth in both revenue and profitability within the technology and industrial sectors," according to Nortek's press release.

"We were attracted to Michael because he has demonstrated a long track record of expanding several manufacturing divisions through multiple market cycles," said Smith. "The board also felt that his experience in a broad array of sectors relevant to our business, as well as his proven ability to motivate, retain and develop talent would be important to Nortek and its stakeholders."

Nortek, whose subsidiaries include brands such as SpeakerCraft, Niles Audio, Elan, Sunfire, Xantech, Linear, Panamax/Furman, OmniMount, LiteTouch and more, made news earlier this year by whittling its manufacturer's rep forces and streamlining them to represent all five brands of its recently formed Audio Video Control (AVC) Group - Niles, Elan, Sunfire, Xantech and Aton.

Flextronics (NASDAQ: FLEX) is a global company operating in 30 countries with more than 200,000 employees. The company describes its services as extending into: "High Reliability Solutions (aerospace and defense, medical and automotive industries), High Velocity Solutions (mobile, consumer and computing manufacturing products), Industrial and Emerging Industries (kiosk and self server solutions, renewable energy products, semiconductor capital equipment, LED manufacturing/LED lighting office automations, smart grid and test measurement), and Integrated Network Solutions (networking and communication, enterprise and home connectivity, server and storage, power and Global Services)."

The integrated network solutions arm of Flextronics covers "networking, communications, server and storage, enterprise and home connectivity (including base stations, core routers and switches, optical and optical network terminal equipment, set-top boxes, DSL/cable modems, enterprise storage device and servers), power and Global Services."

So Clarke would seem more than entrenched in some of the biggest home tech opportunities that CE Pro has identified for 2012.