Andy Balchin
Andy Balchin joins Clearswift as CFO. He has been in the software business for 25 years having previously held CFO and other senior finance positions at SmartStream, SeeBeyond, Documentum, Electronics for Imaging, Symantec, Ashton-Tate and Honeywell Control Systems. He has also held seconded positions in the Enterprise Business Agency and FAST (Federation Against Software Theft).
Andy has a history of driving profitable revenue growth in fast changing software organisation. Andy was previously CFO of SmartStream where he was appointed in January 2007 by a private equity firm who had just acquired the company for £85m. In the following 9 months he lead the company through a full listing (IPO) on the London Stock Exchange, which ultimately led to a sale of the company to Dubai International Financial Centre Investments (DIFCi), a transaction which was completed in December 2007 for £207m, representing a significant growth in shareholder value in a very short period. He was a main Board Director, he reported to the CEO and had a strong line into the shareholders based in Dubai. With a keen sense of appreciating the need to boost stakeholder value, with strong commercial and analytical skills, and working very closely with the CEO, he helped grow the business from £39m revenue in FY 2006 to £62m revenue in FY 2010, with an EBITDA margin of 25-30%.
Prior to SmartStream, Andy was the European VP Finance at SeeBeyond for 6 years where he helped grow the European business from $6m revenue to $70m revenue in 5 years. In 2005, SeeBeyond was acquired by Sun and Andy left Sun in December 2006 following the successful integration of the two European businesses. Prior to SeeBeyond, Andy spent 5 years with Documentum as European Finance Director helping it to grow from $6m to $60m revenue before being acquired by EMC.
Andy is ex-Deloitte Haskins and Sells and is a first time pass qualified Chartered Accountant in the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England &Wales (ICAEW) and graduated from Westminster University in accountancy.