Provided
Lexmark_Reeder
Lexmark’s new chief financial officer is as new as the Lexington-based company’s recently unveiled verdant “aperture” logo redesign, but he is in no way as green.
David Reeder stepped into the role in January, not three months before the company announced plans to pay $1 billion for California- based software firm Kofax Ltd., doubling the size of Lexmark’s software division and further solidifying its move away from printers and into content management and services.
Stepping into the lead financial role at a multibillion-dollar corporation takes vision, smarts and confidence. Coming from outside the corporate structure and into the middle of a character-defining transition as costly as it is unassured of ultimate success takes something more.
“It’s what I’ve done my whole career,” said Reeder.
The married, 40-year-old father of three sat down recently with Business Lexington for an exclusive interview, detailing a background that began in the Arkansas Ozarks before launching a globe-trotting career as an engineering and technology-minded executive and offering his vision for Lexmark going forward.
Reeder grew up on a large ranch in the small northwest Arkansas town of Cedarville at the south edge of Ozark National Forest.
“It was a working ranch, but my dad did well for himself early in life, so he didn’t feel some of the same pressure necessarily that our neighbors felt,” Reeder said.
He credits his Catholic school education with instilling a love for learning, and he earned a full academic scholarship to the University of Arkansas, where he studied chemical engineering. After graduating he went to work for Texas Instruments in Dallas and obtained an MBA at Southern Methodist University.
“I got my MBA at night, wound up going through a management program at Texas Instruments, and it took me everywhere,” Reeder said.
Indeed from there, Reeder’s passport stamps, resume entries and family took on an international fl air. He worked in England in the late 1990s, where he met his wife.
“It’s the cliche: I met her in a pub,” he said.
After a brief stint in New Hampshire, he moved to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where he set a factory and the couple welcomed their first child. Reeder then moved to southern France, had another child, and oversaw T.I.’s wireless division there before joining Broadcom. Reeder then lived and worked for five years in Singapore, where he managed Broadcom’s Asia operations and the couple had their third child.
Finally, it was time to come home.
While effusive in his praise for Singapore — “It’s a beautiful city, a modern city, it’s a phenomenal place, rich culture, rich people, great art, great education, very safe” — he said he began to long for home and the values he grew up with.
Reeder and his family returned to the United States, where he joined Cisco Systems in California’s Silicon Valley to aid a management restructuring, and he later served as CFO for Electronics for Imaging Inc.
Still, Reeder said, he found himself wanting to move closer to Arkansas, where many of his family members, including his mother, still live. After a career built on following the hottest opportunity, Reeder said location became paramount.
But with a skills set built on engineering knowledge and financial acumen at the highest levels, such a goal isn’t easily fulfilled.
“There are not a lot of multibillion-dollar market cap companies that are kind of a day’s drive from Arkansas that have CFO positions come available, so certainly that was a factor,” Reeder allowed.
Describing it as a “great fit” for both his career and family needs, Reeder has taken the financial reins at a company that is rapidly changing its business model to survive in a quickly evolving market.
Reeder points to his global experience as well as his education in both engineering and finance — “When someone comes to me with how much we’re spending on R&D, and ‘Is it enough or not enough?’ and ‘What projects are working?’ I actually know what they do.” — as assets he hopes to leverage at Lexmark. But he also points to the company’s history of successful transitions, producing typewriters before breaking off from IBM and moving into printers and then services and now software.
“I think the DNA is great; I think the DNA and the culture is great,” he said. “It’s a celebration of grit, resilience, dedication. There’s not a lot of companies that have made one of those transitions, and here you have a company that has made five or six.”
Successfully navigating the latest transition will require moves as bold as the $1 billion Kofax purchase, which is scheduled to close in the second quarter if shareholders agree to terms.
The results — good or bad — will be years off . And as Lexmark CEO Paul Rooke did after the Kofax announcement in March, Reeder demurred on the subject of whether such a large acquisition would bring some job losses.
“I think it’s too soon to tell,” Reeder said. “We haven’t begun any part of the integration process yet,” Reeder said, projecting that it would take a year or more of work and study before issues of job efficiency and optimization would take center stage.
For Lexmark as a whole, Reeder said the next year is all about positioning, especially with regard to Europe, where he said Lexmark gets about 40 percent of its revenue.
“When I think about success for the company, it’s positioning ourselves to be able to execute in an economic environment where the euro is probably devalued by 30, maybe 40, percent by year end,” he said. “If the Fed raises rates, it may be even more.”