Graham is a C-level CFO who has broad leadership experience in both public and private companies with a focus on Private Equity roles. Recent highlight include: 5 successful sale transactions to exit two complex investments, multiple debt raises including investor roadshows, handling all aspects of investor relations, building finance teams to support ongoing operations.
A resourceful Senior Financial Executive equally adept at handling Board level discussions as he is with fixing an AP team, Graham offers extensive experience in strategy and corporate development, business planning and operational analysis, capital markets and deal structures. Excels at distilling business strategies into clear and readily communicable objectives and measurements, building the credibility to hold teams accountable and rapidly developing finance teams to deliver those objectives. A self-directed leader who cultivates strong working relationships at all levels of the organization (including external parties such as the Board and Private Equity owners).
Specialties:
• Strategic Planning
• Budgeting and Forecasting (Including liquidity challenged PE situations)
• Leading sale processes: exited 5 business segments to strategic and PE backed owners
• Multiple refinancings: successful bond and term loan refinancings in stressed situations
• P&L management (including cost reduction and costs system development)
• Stakeholder Management: reconciling PE board, external debt holder and management team expectations of the PE ownership process
• Tax planning and rate reduction execution
• Rapid development of new finance teams and financial process
CFO @ From August 2014 to Present (1 year 5 months) Greater Atlanta AreaCFO @ Managed successful exit of an Oaktree portfolio company facing a tight covenant situation. Tekni-Plex is a global manufacturer of plastic packaging components that was acquired by Oaktree Capital in an out of court restructuring in 2008. In 2011 the business was in covenant squeeze with a current maturity on it's second lien debt with several significant material weaknesses in it's financial reporting. The objective was to manage the business through to an orderly exit.
• Replaced failing finance leadership team, eliminated several material weaknesses and failures in external banks and bond financial reporting
• Rebuilt external reporting to better explain the complicated nature of the business to the Debt holders and give clarity on the historical earning streams within the different segments. Included redefining the 10K segments, rebuilding financials to support both a roadshow process and bond filings, taking the new structure to the ratings agencies and removing any questions on the financial reporting by getting filings out on time with no restatements.
• Refinanced two tier debt structure facing a going concern default with a single bond structure. Successful roadshow process to sell a 'C' rated high leverage bond, and a follow on recap on the back of a rating agency uprating
• Disposition of a non-core consumer asset (Swan Hose business) to prepare the group for sale
• Sale of the whole business through a rigorous auction process, achieved nearly 8x EBITDA on exit for a plastics packaging business From November 2011 to February 2014 (2 years 4 months) CFO @ CFO for a Private Equity owned Engineering, Construction and Manufacturing company bought out of failed re-financing following significant losses in major construction contracts:
• Replaced lead finance team following correction of numerous purchase accounting issues and re-statement of closing and first year financials
• Implemented first centralized finance policies for the company, finance lead for rebuilding the contracting and project execution processes to avoid recurrence of loss contracts, and make the bidding and estimating process more robust.
• Established Audit Committee process, bid and replaced auditors and rolled out sub certifications to all operating entities, rolled out COSO framework and controls audits in first 6 months
• Changed out banking provider, renegotiated insurance contracts and raised surety bonding capacity from $35MM to $65MM
• Rolled out consolidation system, integrated forecasting, implemented first 3 year strategic planning process for the business, and interfaced back to Private Equity group regarding ongoing evaluation of sale options
• Generated tax refunds of $3.5MM in first 12 months, lowered cash tax rate by 2%
Liquidated business as a series of three transactions, final piece anticipated to be closed by end of July 2011, generating $488MM gross proceeds ($444MM net of debt) on an initial equity investment of $66MM:
• December 2010 - Roberts & Schaefer, $300-$400MM annual revenue EPC business in bulk material handling required fixing of commercial and project execution process, raised EBITDA from $(10)MM to $45MM in 2 years, sold for $294MM.
• June 2011 - Elgin Equipment Group, manufacturer of Coal processing equipment, implemented lean manufacturing and raised EBITDA from $11Mm to $15MM and sold for $133MM
• September 2011 - Elgin Fastener Group, manufacturer of specialty industrial fasteners ($45MM annual revenue and $8MM EBITDA) closed September 2011 for $55MM From June 2008 to September 2011 (3 years 4 months) Greater Chicago AreaVP Finance @ Owner of all Finance process for a $550MM revenue listed hi tech equipment manufacturer. Finance team of 100 people covering all phases of business including sales, cost accounting, FP&A, SEC reporting etc. From January 2008 to May 2008 (5 months) Greater Los Angeles AreaVP Corporate Development @ EarthLink is a $1.3Bn Revenue Internet Services Provider with nearly 4.5MM subscribers. Responsible for FP&A, M&A, Six Sigma program.
• Leader of all phases of planning and internal reporting processes within EarthLink. Responsible for quarterly Board presentation on Financials and Corporate Development, support of all earnings calls
• Completed a number of M&A, JV and funding transactions: Raised $260MM in public Convertible Debt – issue was four times oversubscribed, with interest coupon 50 basis points bellowed indicated pricing (saving $1.3MM per year in interest costs) an took the convert premium from 37.5% over issue price to 75% more than halving the 5 year dilution impact. $130MM acquisition of NewEdge Networks and a $50MM inward convertible investment to Covad for a DSL2+ network build out, structuring of a $60Mm lease facility with GE to find a Wifi network build out.
• Financial lead on the strategic review of EarthLink’s business including: multiple finance structure evaluations including PE go private process, appraisal of current business models and a profit enhancement model. Final model leading to a downsizing of the business by 900 heads and an increase in projected ’08 EBITDA from $130MM to $290MM
• Leader for the integration of NewEdge Networks post deal closure including systems integration and Sarbanes Oxley compliance, formation of the Helio MVNO JV between EarthLink and SK Telecom and integration of Aluria software including financial systems integration and SOX 404 compliance.
• Implemented Hyperion planning process including redesign of all metrics and scorecards, moved business to a driver based forecasting model and reduced planning cycle time from 7 days to 24 hours
• Implemented Six Sigma program using model from GE – trained over 80 green belts, hired 3 Black Belts and generated nearly $4MM in annual savings across 3 businesses in 12 months. From December 2004 to December 2007 (3 years 1 month) Greater Atlanta AreaCFO @ Elementis is a $350mm revenue global specialties chemical company, a subsidiary of a UK Listed PLC. Responsible for all phases of Finance as well as the leader for all aspects of acquisition activity including: strategic direction, target identification, due diligence and negotiation, post acquisition integration. Staff of 45 with 5 direct reports.
• Re-engineered finance process: took monthly closing cycle from 6 days to 48 hours, implemented a monthly planning process that took 48 hours to replace a quarterly process that took 5 days.
• Four deals completed: acquired $140mm surfactant manufacturer, $15mm disposition of non-core butyl business, disposal of $2mm annual revenue paint distributor in Holland, and led establishment of manufacturing plant in Renheng, China. Increased revenue of the business by almost 70%
• Finance team successfully integrated Dutch surfactant manufacturer: integrated all accounting functions into shared service organizations, completed move to JD Edwards ERP
• Implemented JD Edwards ERP and consolidated accounting operations for all group companies into two shared service centers (US and UK) From February 2002 to December 2004 (2 years 11 months) Greater New York City AreaCFO Contractual Services @ GE Contractual Services is a $1.1Bn revenue P&L that operates Long Term Service Contracts at more than 1000 Power Plants in 20 countries. Responsible for all phases of Finance globally with a staff of 50 with 3 direct reports
• Finance lead on negotiations for over $21Bn of long term service agreements, grew business from $300MM in revenue to ’99 to over $1.1Bn by y/e 2002
• Integrated $500MM worth of contracts from the Kvaerner acquisition
• Implemented stand alone economic evaluations and models for all Long Term Service Contracts and built metrics model from individual plant level through to total business – enabled productivity gains equating to a margin increase on contracts of nearly 3% (41% GM to 44%) through early introduction of upgrade technologies
• Metrics leader for GE Services Council establishing common metrics and evaluation models for ROI on log term service deals across multiple GE businesses From January 2000 to January 2002 (2 years 1 month) Greater Atlanta AreaMgr FP&A Energy Services @ Energy Services is a $6.0Bn revenue business group in GE Power Systems, with 5 P&L’s reporting up to the business group. Led staff of 6 in the Corporate Financial Planning and Analysis team.
• Established FP&A team and processes for newly formed $6.0Bn revenue business group generating $700mm in Net Income
• Built planning process to integrate across 6 business units serving a common customer base to allow both P&L and customer level metrics as well as customer level planning
• All aspects of planning, analysis, consolidation and presentation of the business including: acquisition cases, analyst presentation 1 year and three year planning cycles.
• Lead in developing all presentations including SI (three year plan), SII (one year plan) as well as the GE Service Council, 2 Energy Service investor days, and 2 presentations to the GE Board
• Business Group leader for implementation of Oracle 11i General Ledger From September 1998 to January 2000 (1 year 5 months) Greater Atlanta AreaMgr FP&A Global Parts @ GE Energy Parts is a $800MM revenue P&L. Responsible for FP&A, GL, AP, AR and cost accounting with a staff of 10.
• Leader on the formation of the Aftermarket Parts distribution business including: establishment of cost accounting separate from Original Equipment manufacturing business, linkage into sales team metrics, establishment of pricing process, billing and payables processes and built first separate balance sheet
• $20mm in NI benefits per annum from implementation of single state tax structure
• Identified $20mm write off’s resulting from controllership issues in the international sales recognition process
• Built Finance team and processes from ground up, recruited team of 10 in 4 months. From September 1996 to September 1998 (2 years 1 month) Albany, New York AreaAuditor @ Auditor in GE's Corporate Audit Staff, rising to Audit manager. From September 1993 to September 1996 (3 years 1 month)
MEng, Electronic Systems Engineering @ Aston University From 1986 to 1990 Graham Sayers is skilled in: Private Equity, Financial Planning, Board Relations, Forecasting, Accounting, SEC reporting, Auditing, Cost Accounting, Financial Reporting, Mergers & Acquisitions, Finance