620: When People Matter Most | Laurie Krebs, CFO, Red Hat

It was October 2019. Red Hat, Inc., was preparing to submit its latest quarterly results to its new parent, IBM Corp., and Laurie Krebs had just been named Red Hat software’s new CFO.

As a senior vice president of finance for Red Hat, Krebs had worked closely with the former CFO and more or less assumed that the acquiring company would likely prefer to fill C-suite spots from its “home team” talent bench of senior executives.

In fact, Krebs says that during the course of her career she had never truly aspired to be a CFO: “I often wondered who would want all of that responsibility, especially after Sarbanes-Oxley came in. And then, at the time, I realized that IBM had just acquired us for $34 billion and that it was going to be up to us to deliver the results that were needed.”

Krebs says that the finance team at Red Hat, like many executive teams within newly acquired companies, had experienced some attrition and was perhaps not as highly functioning as it had been prior to its acquisition.

As the first quarterly close for the newly acquired Red Hat approached, Krebs sought to reassure her CEO that she would continue to lead the team. “I’ll help you out until you get a legit CFO,” Krebs recalls saying—to which her CEO replied: “No, no, no—we want you to be it.”

The CEO then reassured Krebs that it had been a unanimous opinion across Red Hat’s and IBM’s leadership teams that she should become Red Hat’s next CFO.

Still, the pressure was on, and Krebs had to not only deliver the company’s first post-acquisition quarterly results but also activate the collaborative processes required to satisfy a giant parent company.

“I did what I always do. I surrounded myself with the right talent and strong skillsets and created a team out of it,” comments Krebs, who says that her team today includes a seasoned “IBM finance partner” now tasked as sort of a go-between and translator for Red Hat and its parent.

Echoing the executive’s words, Krebs relays his guidance: “Here are the deliverables that IBM’s looking for. Here’s why they look for them. When they ask for this, this is typically what CFO’s look for.”

Krebs adds: “He has been what I call a ‘gift’ on our team." - Jack Sweeney SUBSCRIBE