Tuesday, June 25, 2013
WE MEET AT RIVER CITY BREWING COMPANY
Lunch begins at noon - Meeting begins at 12:30 p.m.
Meet Asok K. Chauduri
Principal, Heritage Capital Group
Asok
K. Chaudhuri is a principal of Heritage Capital Group and its sister company,
Business Valuation, Inc. (BVI). His primary areas of expertise are M&A
transactions in the U.S. and abroad, valuation, economic consulting, strategic
planning, corporate turnaround, and shareholder value creation. He has
experience in several industry sectors including transportation,
logistics/distribution, manufacturing, health care, and information technology.
Mr. Chaudhuri hails from India where he earned a B.S. degree in physics
followed by an M.S. in physics and an M.S. in applied statistics. He came to the
U.S. in 1975 and earned an M.S. in operations research and a Ph.D. in operations
research and planning, both from the Weatherhead School of Management at Case
Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. He has taken several executive
programs in economics, corporate finance, and business management. His Ph.D.
dissertation on multiple objective optimization in planning and budgeting was
the first place winner in an international competition of Ph.D. dissertations in
the field of decision sciences. He has been inducted to the Decision Science’s
Hall of Fame.
Prior to joining Heritage Capital Group and BVI, Mr. Chaudhuri was a senior
executive at CSX Corporation, a $12 billion dollar transportation and logistics
company in the U.S. During his 26 years at CSX, he held increasingly responsible
positions including senior vice president of corporate development, vice
president of finance, vice president of financial planning and analysis, vice
president and CFO of CSX’s intermodal business unit, and chief finance officer
of CSX’s automotive business unit. His responsibilities involved
mergers/acquisitions/divestitures, strategy development, business and capital
investment planning, risk analytics, corporate performance improvement, and
shareholder value creation.
Mr. Chaudhuri was a key player in the strategic transformation of CSX from a
multi-modal transportation conglomerate to a rail-based company through the
divestitures of several non-rail businesses and acquisition of a large rail
business. The most recent transaction, which was led by Mr. Chaudhuri, was the
sale of CSX’s global container port business, CSX World Terminals, in early 2005
to Dubai Ports International (DP World) for $1.2 billion, which represents a
record 15 times EBITDA. This transaction was to sell off terminal businesses in
nine countries on five continents involving complex business, legal, structural,
tax, and JV partner issues. As the parent company’s senior vice president of
corporate development, and over a period of three years prior to the
transaction, Mr. Chaudhuri positioned the company for a successful sale through
prudent investments in attractive markets of the world and disinvestments in
other markets.
As the vice president and CFO of CSX’s intermodal business unit, Mr.
Chaudhuri quarterbacked its turnaround and acquisition-driven growth in the late
1990’s. The unit’s operating income grew from $30 million to $180 million in
eight years. He was one of the principal architects of CSX’s performance
improvement in the mid-1990’s that increased the rail unit’s operating income
from $600 million to $1,275 million in five years. This corporate-wide
initiative involved a thorough understanding of the key drivers of shareholder
value, benchmarking against the best in and outside of the industry to establish
performance gaps, and a rigorous execution process to close the gaps over time.
Mr. Chaudhuri was responsible for introducing several new ideas and initiatives
at CSX — shareholder value based management using an EVA framework,
establishment of a new automotive business unit to bring focus to its standalone
income statement, transfer pricing mechanism between various business units and
the parent company, product and geographic income statements and performance
metrics, comparative analysis versus competitors, and cooperative business
arrangements with independent shortline rail operators.
Prior to joining CSX, Mr. Chaudhuri worked at British Petroleum (Standard Oil
of Ohio) as a market research analyst, primarily developing retail gasoline sale
forecasting models. He has also consulted in the health care, pharmaceutical,
telephone, retail, and manufacturing industries on projects involving
statistical quality control, inventory management, industrial/production
engineering, forecasting, zero-based budgeting, and simulation games. As an
adjunct faculty, he has taught MBA, executive MBA and other graduate level
courses on decision sciences, operations research, managerial statistics,
investment analysis, corporate finance, operations and supply chain management
at Cleveland State University, Case Western Reserve University, and
Baldwin-Wallace College. He has offered short courses and lectured at several
institutions including MIT, Yale, University of Florida, University of North
Florida, University of Munich (Germany), International Institute of Applied
Systems Analysis (Vienna), Hong Kong University, Indian Institute of Management,
and Indian Statistical Institute. He actively participates in professional
meetings, often as an invited speaker. He frequently consults on industry
issues as a Leader of GLG Expert Network.
Mr. Chaudhuri served on the Board of Directors of TTX Company, a $1 billion
rail equipment and service provider based in Chicago. He continues to serve on
the advisory board of Innovative Scheduling, a technology company which develops
optimization and decision support software for the transportation and supply
chain industries. He has served on the academic advisory council of Jacksonville
University’s Davis College of Business and as an industry liaison to MIT’s
Center for Transportation and Logistics.
Mr. Chaudhuri is active in the Jacksonville community, having served as the
Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce International Business Strategy Committee,
member of the Stage II (Grow Florida) Business Advisory Board, member of the
Mayor’s Logistics Education Committee. He is a member of the Rotary Club of
Downtown Jacksonville.
Sophia Williams
Mike and Sandi Christiansen welcome their 5th grandchild, Sophia Williams. Born June 11th weighting 7 lbs. 9 oz.
Hail & Farewell Photos
