January 03, 2011, 5:30 PM — -- Name: Jeff Babka
-- Age: 57
-- Time with company: 4 months
-- Education: University of Dayton, Dayton, Ohio, BS in Business Administration with a major in Accounting (Magna cum Laude, 1973); Manhattan College, Bronx, New York, MBA (1981); Stanford Executive Program (1990)
-- Company headquarters: New York, NY
-- Revenue: $100M+
-- Countries: U.S., U.K., France, Germany
-- Number of employees: 250
-- Number CFO oversees: 33
Where did you start in finance and what experiences led you to the job you have today?
I started my career in public accounting back in 1973 and passed the CPA exam in May of 1974. Just to show you how long ago that was, there was only one FASB pronouncement out then but it wasn't out for six months so we didn't need to know it for the CPA exam.
I was fortunate to have a wide variety of both financial and non-financial experiences over my career, all of which in combination seemed to prepare me well for becoming a public company CFO and taking companies down the IPO path. My longest tenure was with AT&T and then Lucent Technologies after the spin off in 1996. I had several financial roles there, including being CFO of a $6 billion business unit, and managing a very small team with the remit of taking a domestic product line to international markets. The international experience was invaluable in learning to deal with cultural and technical financial issues across borders.
My first public company CFO experience was with Indus International, an enterprise asset management software company, which had a major contract with the U.K. Ministry of Defense suspended right before I joined. We spent nine quarters getting the company back to profitability and were able to raise some capital on Wall Street and do a couple acquisitions, which along with some significant downsizing, brought the company back to profitability. I guess it was the job I did there that gave our financial sponsors the idea that I could be a good candidate to take a communications company in their portfolio public. That company was NeuStar, which we took public in 2005 and it was the Renaissance Capital and IFS IPO of the Year for 2005. That success got me to Sophos in 2009, which was acquired by a U.K. private equity firm just as we were about to hold our IPO organizational meeting. Since Sophos didn't need a public company CFO in the U.S., I like to say that both Lebron James and Jeff Babka became free agents on July 1, 2010! Lebron "took his talents to South Beach" and after a couple of months of relaxation, I took mine to the Big Apple when Doug Stevenson, Vibrant Media's co-founder and CEO, offered me the opportunity to join them as CFO on Sept. 1.
Who was an influential boss for you and what lessons did they teach you about management and leadership?
I am very fortunate to have worked for and with some very effective leaders and ineffective leaders over my 37-year career, and I have to say that I learned something from each of them -- either shaping what I do or not do! One of the most influential was Gus Blanchard, who headed a business unit for AT&T back in the late 1980s that I was CFO of. Gus was a very dynamic individual with outstanding interpersonal and presentation skills who was well respected throughout the business. I can trace back a lot of the subtleties of my presentation skills and skills in dealing with people and people issues back to what I learned from observing Gus. Another individual was Joe Trino whom I worked with at Indus International who is now an EVP at Starcite. Joe is a former public company CEO who was very experienced in dealing with Wall Street, public company boards and private equity investors. Joe knows the "art form" of life in a public company world and he was a great mentor to me when we worked together, and to this day I still often pick up the phone and call Joe to discuss an issue or get advice.
What are the biggest challenges facing CFOs today?
The job of a public company CFO is very complex and requires not only the balancing of a myriad of both internal and external pressures, but also addressing what he or she will do personally versus that which can be effectively delegated to others. Getting a team of highly skilled people who work well together as a team and with the rest of the company is key. Quite often a new CFO inherits a team that, although competent, doesn't work well together or doesn't mesh with his or her personal style and expertise. ... I am very fortunate at Vibrant to have inherited a team that meshes very well with my style in addition to being very competent and effective. That enables us to focus our time and attention on taking on new challenges as opposed to trying to find new talent.
What is a good day at work like for you?
