At CACI, Cofoni steps up as CEO

A changing of the guard is under way at CACI International Inc. as long-time Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jack London has decided to hand over CEO responsibilities to Paul Cofoni, who joined the company almost two years ago as president of U.S. operations.

London, who has been CEO since 1984, will remain chairman of the Arlington, Va.-based company, a position he has held since 1990.

Cofoni will officially take over the CEO spot July 1, when CACI starts its new fiscal year. CACI's board of directors approved the move Wednesday.

The succession plan has been in the works since Cofoni joined the company from Computer Sciences Corp. in August 2005, London said.

"We've been working as a team and Paul has done a fantastic job of moving in here and working as a partner. I think it is an ideal time to move into the next phase of CACI's story," he said.

The plot line London and Cofoni want the company story to take is to elevate CACI from being a large tier two player in the government market to being a solid tier one player, they said. Currently, CACI brings in about $2 billion in annual revenue and is ranked No. 22 on Washington Technology's 2007 Top 100 list of the largest government contractors.

"Our goal is to get to the tier one level and compete for the most complex, large problems the government has and help solve those," Cofoni said.

Cofoni's experience at General Dynamics, where he worked for 17 years, and CSC, where he spent 14 years before joining CACI, is the type of tier one experience London said he wanted in a successor.

"That was part of the criteria we had when we went looking for our next senior executive," he said.

Cofoni came to CACI knowing the type of infrastructure a company needs to pursue large contracts. Since he came on board, CACI has shifted away from smaller projects and now sees opportunities worth $100 million and above as its bread and butter, Cofoni said.

The shift has paid off with major wins such as the Defense Department's Encore II contract and the Army's Information Technology Enterprise Solutions 2-Services, Strategic Services Sourcing and the Field and Installation Readiness Support Team contracts.

To compete and win on such contracts takes cultural and structural changes by a company, Cofoni said. "You have to be able to access the full resources of the company, all the talents and skills in the company," he said. "We're doing that."

As CEO, Cofoni will be the principle executive in all dealings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the New York Stock Exchange, where CACI shares are traded.

As chairman, London will still be active in the company's mergers and acquisitions activities as well as customer relationships and working with Cofoni on CACI's strategic vision. In recent years, the role of the chairman and the board of directors has increased in responsibility and become more active because of legal and regulatory requirements of the SEC and NYSE, he said.

Being chairman will be "a full time job for a while," he said.