James Howe has been appointed President and Chief Operating Officer of Motion, the industrial parts distribution business that Genuine Parts Company is preparing to separate into a standalone public company. The appointment took effect on 6 September 2026 and was disclosed on 9 September 2026 in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission and in a statement naming the leadership teams for both businesses.
Howe has led Motion as President since April 2024. The new title adds the chief operating officer remit, and it positions him as the senior operating executive of the business as it prepares for life as an independent company. He will work alongside Will Stengel, who will become Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Motion when the separation completes, a transaction the company expects to close in the first quarter of 2027.
Under the terms disclosed in the filing, Howe moves to a base salary of 750,000 dollars with an annual bonus target of 100 per cent of salary and a 2027 equity target of 2.3 million dollars. The figures are set out in the Item 5.02 section of the filing, which covers the election and compensation of principal officers.
Motion supplies bearings, power transmission products, hydraulics, pneumatics, industrial automation and maintenance, repair and operations products to manufacturers, processors and infrastructure operators. It has been part of Genuine Parts Company alongside the automotive distribution network that trades as NAPA in North America, and it is the smaller of the two businesses by revenue while carrying the higher margin profile that has drawn investor attention to the separation.
The chief operating officer role is where a distribution business is actually run. Motion competes on branch density, inventory availability, technical support and the speed with which a maintenance engineer can get a part. Those are operating disciplines rather than strategic ones, and promoting the sitting president to own them formally suggests the board wants continuity in execution while the corporate structure changes around it.
The timing is deliberate. Separating a distribution business involves disentangling shared systems, shared distribution infrastructure and shared supplier relationships, and it has to be done while both halves keep serving customers. Naming the operating leadership six months or more before the expected close gives Motion a single accountable executive for that work rather than a shared services function managing it part time.
Genuine Parts Company set out a full slate at the same time. Court Carruthers was named Chief Executive Officer-elect of the automotive business, which will retain the Genuine Parts name, and Bert Nappier was promoted to Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer with effect from the same date as Howe's appointment.
For Howe the practical change is reporting line and scope rather than subject matter. He keeps the business he has led since 2024 and gains formal authority over the operating functions that will determine whether Motion arrives at its separation with its service levels intact. That is the measure the market will apply in the first full year after the split.
