JOHN FINK - chief FINANCIAL officer

John has been a valued member of the executive leadership team, either at the Vice President of Finance or Chief Financial Officer level, for 20 years.   Throughout John’s career, he has directly managed finance, treasury, accounting and tax functions, and at various stages, he has also directed the IT, supply chain, facilities, operational support, legal, and risk management functions.    

He has successfully led organizations in several ownership configurations, including private equity portfolio companies, family-owned organizations, and subsidiary holdings of multi-billion dollar, multi-national organizations.    John also has extensive experience with simultaneously leading efficient G&A functions and undertaking major strategic initiatives.    He has both buy and sell-side M&A experience, has relocated, built, and rationalized back-office installations, transitioned ERP systems, and he has administered financing facilities of as much as $110M.

John was most recently the CFO of Le Duff America (LDA), where he dedicated significant effort to successfully engineering of the sale of the Mimi’s Café brand.    John achieved the sale without the assistance of a sell-side M&A advisory firm, in part, because he was able to locate an interested strategic buyer via “cold calling”.    John coordinated efforts with others at LDA to execute a letter of intent, populate an online data room, negotiate a stock purchase agreement and transitional services agreement, and close the transaction.   At the time of sale, Mimi’s operated 76 locations and had annualized sales of approximately $150M. 

In addition to successfully selling a national restaurant brand, while at LDA, John directed and executed the configuration and rollout of a cost of sales and labor management platform (CrunchTime!) to all locations, which he had previously accomplished in one of his prior roles.    John raised the notion of outsourcing G&A functions with LDA's parent company, and negotiated/executed a contract with a major restaurant outsourcing organization (Infosync Services) to take on accounting and payroll services.    While at LDA, John also redesigned the financial reporting regimen for both US stakeholders and the French parent company, and extracted Le Duff from several non-performing joint ventures.

Prior to LDA, John led financial and other functions at four different organizations, including a $300M multinational human resources consulting firm, a $200M full-service restaurant organization, a $100M full-service restaurant and real estate organization, and a $36M restaurant franchisee and real estate developer.    His early career included roles with PricewaterhouseCoopers and in the internal audit department of a Fortune 500 multi-national company.

John can be reached via email at jfink@cogention.com or at 262-389-9755