Lumen Technologies is shaking up its leadership with a CFO transition, handing the financial reins of the company to Arrow Electronics executive Chris Stansbury at the start of next week. He will replace Neel Dev, who has served as Lumen’s CFO since 2018.
A Lumen representative told Fierce Dev will be “pursuing other opportunities” after he leaves the business. The representative added Lumen partnered with an external search firm to find his replacement and chose Stansbury from “a strong and diverse slate of candidates.” Among other attributes, Stansbury brings “deep expertise in positioning technology companies for growth” and a strong track record of building relationships with both customers and investors.
Lumen CEO Jeff Storey said in a statement “Chris' leadership and financial acumen bring a unique skill set to our company as we scale the Lumen Platform and our Quantum Fiber build, both critical drivers of our return to growth.”
He added “it is a natural time for us to find the leader best positioned to achieve our goals” as the company works to deliver profitable revenue growth and improve its revenue mix following the $2.7 billion sale of its Latin America assets and $7.5 billion sale of its ILEC holdings in 20 states to different private equity firms last year.
During a recent investor conference, Lumen executive Laurinda Pang revealed completion of the former deal had been delayed slightly to early Q3. The latter is expected to close in the second half of 2022.
Stansbury has spent nearly eight years at Arrow, joining as VP of finance and chief accounting officer in 2014. He was promoted to SVP of finance and CFO there in 2016. Arrow said in a press release Stansbury will leave his post at the company on April 1 and be replaced by Rick Seidlitz on an interim basis while it searches for a new CFO.
Arrow is a global supplier of electronic components, enterprise computing solutions and intelligent solutions. It reported revenue of $34.48 billion and net income of $1.1 billion in 2021, with the former up 20% and the latter nearly double 2020’s figure.
Prior to joining Arrow, Stansbury served as VP of Finance and CFO for HP’s Global Networking business in the early- to mid-2010s and also held a position as VP of supply chain finance at PepsiCo in the late aughts.
Dev joined Level 3 Communications in 2004, with that company later acquired by Centurylink. Dev stayed on with Centurylink following that deal’s completion in November 2017 and was named CFO in November 2018. Centurylink rebranded as Lumen Technologies in late 2020.
The Lumen representative told Fierce Dev “made tremendous contributions to Lumen over the years, helping us through countless decisions facing the business.”