Richard Schmaeling

Richard Schmaeling has more than 25 years of experience in corporate finance and business transformation and has served as CFO for six companies with revenues ranging from $200 million to over $2 billion across diverse industries, including media, ad-tech, information services, SaaS, business services and life sciences. Mr. Schmaeling has extensive experience leading cross-functional teams to drive profitable growth through business transformation initiatives, M&A and integration programs for both PE-backed and public companies. Additionally, he has extensive capital markets and investor relations experience.

Mr. Schmaeling brings significant expertise building financial functions and embedding FP&A discipline, as well as fostering a culture of continuous improvement. He has built several shared services organizations, leveraging business process outsourcing (“BPO”) partnerships and technology to reduce costs, accelerate time to close and free up working capital.

Mr. Schmaeling has led multiple large-scale integration programs, including the integration of CBS Radio into Entercom (delivering $170 million in combination synergies) and Dow Jones into News Corp (delivering $100 million of synergies). He also led a multiyear program to build from scratch a wide range of shared services and capabilities to replace those provided via a transition services agreement (“TSA”) for the carve out of Squibb Diagnostics from Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Mr. Schmaeling has extensive M&A experience, having served as the finance lead on Dow Jones’ M&A team that executed 10 transactions with an aggregate value of more than $1 billion and managed due diligence for News Corp’s $5.7 billion acquisition of Dow Jones. He also led all financial aspects of LIN Media’s $500 million M&A program, including acquisition case development, due diligence and financing. As CFO of Audacy, a public company combining CBS Radio and Entercom, Mr. Schmaeling led the acquisition of a SaaS streaming platform company and served as its general manager, doubling the platform’s revenues to nearly $50 million over its first two years of ownership.

Throughout his engagements, Mr. Schmaeling has managed functions including accounting, finance, treasury, tax, SEC reporting, risk management, legal, human resources, business intelligence and information technology.

Relevant Experience:

• Served as interim CFO of Dow Jones (subsequent to its acquisition by News Corp)
• Served as CFO of LIN Media, a public company sold to Media General for $2.4 billion
• Served as CFO of MediaMath, a VC-backed ad-tech platform
• Served as CFO for Internova Travel Group, a PE-backed business and one of the largest travel agency groups in the world
• Served as North America CFO for the Bracco Group, a private global leader in diagnostic imaging
• Led the restructuring of Audacy, including its liability management program that included a cost takeout totaling more than $145 million; when market conditions failed to improve, managed its prepackaged bankruptcy, reducing debt by $1.6 billion (82%) and allowed the company to emerge with 2.5x total net leverage