User:TruHistory/Robert A. Schriesheim

Robert A. Schriesheim, 51 (born 1960), is an American businessman.

Mr. Schriesheim seems to have a focus on serving as a corporate director and/or CFO of public companies in the technology, software, information services, consumer financial services and semiconductor sectors and leading them through broad strategic, operational and financial corporate transformations including complex restructurings.

Education
Mr. Schriesheim graduated from Princeton University with a degree in chemistry and from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business with an MBA. He also graduated from The Pingry School, a college preparatory country day school in New Jersey, in 1978.

Notable Roles
According to a November 2009 interview and profile in CFO (magazine) it appears that Mr. Schriesheim has "spent most of his career at the high end of the strategy spectrum, embroiled in complex restructurings". He has played leadership roles in several transformational situations where he has been the CFO and/or a board director for companies that have been turned-around, restructured, built-up and sold for $12 billion since 2004:

He was a board director of Dobson Communications – the largest independent rural wireless provider in the US with over $1 billion in revenues from 2004 until its sale in 2007 to ATT for $5.1 billion.

He was Executive Vice President and CFO from 2006 to 2009, and a board director of Lawson Software  from 2006 until present. Lawson's investors included Romesh T. Wadhwani through his private equity firm Symphony Technology Group with Mr. Wadhwani serving Lawson as Co-Chairman. Lawson announced its pending sale April of 2011 to software company Infor (backed by private equity firm Golden Gate Capital) for $2 billion for a 14% premium to the stock price before speculation and 35% premium to the 52 week average closing price. Lawson was the world’s third largest public ERP software company with about $800 million in revenues, 4,000 customers and 4,000 employees. According to published reports, during his tenure at Lawson he helped lead a strategic, financial and operational turnaround that increased operating margins from 3% to 15% and EPS 7 fold.

He departed Lawson Software to become CFO of Hewitt Associates in January of 2010 reporting to CEO Russell P. Fradin. Hewitt was publicly traded on the NYSE and was the world’s leading global provider of human resources and outsourcing solutions with $3B+ in revenues and 23,000 employees with offices in more than 30 countries. . Within 6 months of Mr. Schriesheim joining Hewitt, it was announced, in July of 2010 that Aon Corporation would acquire Hewitt for $4.9 billion in a transaction that closed in October of 2010 at a 41% premium to the prior day’s closing price. .

He was named a board director of MSC Software in December of 2007. In May of 2008 activist hedge fund Elliott Associates disclosed it held a 5.5% stake in MSC Software. In 2009 Mr. Schriesheim became Co-Chairman of MSC Software. MSC was sold to private equity firm Symphony Technology Group, controlled by Romesh T. Wadhwani, for $390 million in 2009 with an interesting twist being that financing was provided by activist hedge fund Elliott Associates. MSC is a global provider of simulation software.

In addition Mr. Schriesheim has been a board member of Skyworks Solutions since 2006. Skyworks is an innovator of high reliability analog and mixed signal semiconductors.

From 1999 to 2002 Mr. Schriesheim was Executive Vice President, CFO and a board member of NYSE-listed Global TeleSystems ("GTS") (the owner of Ebone one of Europe's leading broadband optical and IP network service providers, a Tier 1 network). He was brought in to help restructure and refocus the company. GTS was a pan-European communications services provider, backed by Alan B. Slifka and affiliates of George Soros and Soros Private Equity, with revenues of over $1 billion and operations in 20 countries in Europe as well as a NASDAQ-listed subsidiary, Golden Telecom, which held communications assets in Russia. GTS was essentially a portfolio of communications assets in Western and Eastern Europe which went through an IPO in 1998 and subsequently experienced challenges with an over-levered balance sheet as Europe went through deregulation and from the overall fall-out of the dot.com boom and bust which impacted its customer base. In 2001, to facilitate the sale of GTS, Mr. Schriesheim helped lead it through a pre-arranged filing under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code (U.S.B.C.) and, in prearranged proceedings, a petition for surseance (moratorium), offering a composition, in the Netherlands to restructure its debt, in excess of $2 billion. All such proceedings were approved, confirmed and completed by March 31, 2002 as part of the sale of the company.

Earlier in his career he was affiliated with Brooke Group, a Leveraged buyout firm controlled by Bennett S. LeBow. Investor Bennett S. LeBow acquired control of Western Union through an outside of chapter 11 process that was a complex leveraged recapitalization. LeBow installed Schriesheim at Western Union from 1987 to 1990 as a special advisor to CEO Robert J. Amman to help overseeing a complete strategic, operational and balance sheet restructuring of the company. They executed a strategy of redirecting Western Union from being an asset-based provider of communications services, with a money transfer business as a large but less important part of the business, into being a provider of consumer-based money transfer financial services. Schriesheim focused his attention on the divestiture of the non-strategic telecommunications assets. Ultimately, LeBow's $25 million investment to acquire control of Western Union in 1987 was rewarded when the company was acquired by First Financial Management in 1993 for $1.2 billion     (which was itself acquired in 1995 by First Data Corp in a $6.6 billion merger).

Family Relationships
Mr. Robert A. Schriesheim is the son of Dr. Alan and Beatrice Schriesheim. Dr. Alan Schriesheim is a Director emeritus and the retired CEO of Argonne National Laboratory, one of the U.S. Department of Energy's largest research centers. Alan Schriesheim is an internationally acclaimed chemist and technology executive. With a career spanning 50 years in industry, academia, and government, he was a pioneer in transforming large and highly complex research organizations to yield productive commercialized technology having spent the first 27 years of his career at Exxon overseeing the corporate research laboratories. In 2008 he established The Schriesheim Distinguished Graduate Fellowship at the Eberly College of Science at Penn State University, where he earned his PhD, and met his wife Beatrice who was also in the graduate school of chemistry. Beatrice Schriesheim was a long-time high school chemistry teacher who was committed to the improvement of science education in the United States. She was born in 1930 in Poland and survived the Holocaust by escaping the Nazi invasion in 1939 and surviving imprisonment in Siberia. She arrived in the U.S. in 1947 She played a leadership role in the Achievement Rewards for College Scientists (ARCS) organization. Her memoirs, “Bea's Journey”, documented her Holocaust journey and her life in the United States. They were published in 2003 after her death at the age of 73. .