Ingram Micro Chief Executive Gregory M. Spierkel said he will step down from the computer-equipment distributor, which promoted its operating chief to succeed him. President and Chief Operating Officer Alain Monie will take the helm of the company today, replacing Spierkel, who said it was the right time to spend more time with his family.

The company also gave an upbeat fourth-quarter profit, citing margins buoyed by a kink in the global hard-drive supply chain. Ingram, which acts as a middleman between information-technology departments and some of the world's biggest hardware and software companies, has been reporting weaker profits so far this year partially because of difficulty switching to a new enterprise system in Australia.

Monie, age 61, joined Ingram in 2003 and was promoted to president and chief operating officer in 2007. He resigned three years later to head April Management Pte., a multinational industrial company based in Asia, but returned to Ingram in November