Leidos adds Phillips as M&A leader

Leidos has hired three-decade business veteran and longtime executive Randy Phillips as senior vice president of corporate development to lead the company’s merger-and-acquisition strategy.

Phillips has led M&A transactions in 20 countries that all add up to a total value of more than $40 billion, Leidos said Tuesday. He more recently founded and led his own consulting firm The Silbis Group since its inception last year.

Leidos became the largest publicly-held government IT and professional services company in 2016 when it merged with the Lockheed Martin information systems and global solutions business to double in size to $10 billion in revenue.

General Dynamics quickly caught up in April through the CSRA acquisition to make GD and Leidos almost head-to-end on scale, a factor many federal market M&A deals in the past two years have centered around.

Prior to that, he held senior advisory roles with private equity firms KKR, General Atlantic, and Leonard Green Partners; plus a similar position at consulting firm The Chertoff Group. He also advised several other public and privately-held companies, as well as investment management firms.

Through KKR and General Atlantic, he was named in 2013 as senior VP of corporate development and chief strategy officer at portfolio company TASC, which Engility acquired in 2015.

Phillips joined Boeing in 2014 as vice president of business development and strategy at Boeing with responsibility for all M&A, investment and joint venture activities in its defense and space segment.

His career also includes executive roles at Alcoa, the former Computer Sciences Corp. and TRW, the latter of which he helped lead through its 2002 merger into Northrop Grumman.