Howard Harris
Mr. Harris is a Senior Advisor of Edwards Executive Search.
Howard Harris
He is a seasoned corporate development professional with over 20 years experience in analyzing, evaluating, structuring, negotiating, and consummating a wide variety of business transactions. His experience includes first-chair management of over 30 consummated merger and acquisition transactions (of private and public companies) on 4 continents, several joint ventures, over a dozen venture capital investments in the US and Europe, as well as a large number of licensing agreements, joint marketing arrangements, executive employment agreements, incentive compensation plans, and other forms of strategic alliance. Mr. Harris has served as an officer and director of numerous civic organizations and private companies.
His corporate work began in the legal department of Mohasco Corporation, which was a NYSE listed Fortune 500 company that was the largest home furnishings company in the world. In 1984, Mr. Harris moved to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to join the legal department of AMP Incorporated, the world’s largest manufacturer of electrical, electronic, and optical interconnection devices (then NYSE: AMP, now Tyco Electronics). Five years later, he helped create a global corporate development function to oversee all of AMP’s M&A and minority equity investment activities. In 1996, Mr. Harris moved to England to serve as Director, Corporate Development – Europe, Middle East & Africa, where he was actively involved in AMP’s expansion into Eastern Europe, managing consummated transactions in Poland, Croatia and Denmark, and investigations of potential acquisition opportunities in Latvia, Bulgaria, and the Ukraine, as well as several countries in Western Europe.
After AMP’s acquisition by Tyco in 1999, Mr. Harris moved to Michigan to become Vice President, M&A, for Textron Automotive Company, a $3 Billion subsidiary of Textron, Inc. (NYSE: TXT). While at TAC, he led the teams that acquired businesses in Italy, Brazil and the US, and divested companies in England and Germany, in addition to investigating potential acquisitions, strategic alliances and joint ventures in Europe, US and Japan.
In 2001, Mr. Harris moved to St. Petersburg, Florida, to become Senior Director, Corporate Development, for Jabil Circuit, Inc. (NYSE: JBL), a leading Tier 1 electronic manufacturing services company. Over a 3 year period he led the teams responsible for acquiring manufacturing facilities from Compaq (Ayr, Scotland), Intel (Penang, Malaysia), Quantum (Penang, Malaysia), and NEC (Gotemba, Japan), acquiring a 49% interest in a Minority-owned Business Enterprise in Detroit, Michigan, as well as teams that investigated potential acquisitions and OEM divestitures in virtually every region of the globe.
Since 2005, Mr. Harris has been a senior director with Advanced Materials Partners, Inc., a consulting firm that assists leading corporations with their strategic growth initiatives, including formulation, validation, and implementation of growth strategies.
He has been active throughout his career serving as a Board Member or official observer for a number of civic and business organizations.
Mr. Harris earned his B.S. in Management – Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA; and his J.D., summa cum laude, The Ohio State University College of Law, Columbus, OH. Mr. Harris is also a graduate of Leadership Harrisburg.