Fair Isaac Names Veteran IBM Business Strategist, Mark Greene, as Its New CEO

Fair Isaac's new chief executive officer, Dr. Mark N. Greene, says he will begin his tenure at the company by focusing his energies on three areas in the enterprise decision management (EDM) space: sales, marketing and development.

Fair Isaac Corp., which provides decision management solutions, on Feb. 14 announced that its board of directors had chosen Greene to serve as CEO. Greene, 52, is a 12-year veteran of IBM in the company's financial services industry segment and software business groups.

In a conference call on Feb. 15 following the announcement, Greene said he wanted to pioneer a vertical industry sales model, work to ensure that Fair Isaac's marketing efforts deliver clear messages and develop ways for the company's products to work together better through tighter integration. "This is really a requirement as we move toward the emerging technical world of Web services and services-oriented architecture, or SOA, that really demand the kind of interoperability that I'm talking about here," Greene said.

Greene most recently served as vice president of sales and distribution for Financial Services at IBM, responsible for setting business development strategy and driving growth across the $24 billion banking, financial markets and insurance industry segment. Prior to that, he served for four years as general manager of IBM's Global Banking unit, the company's largest industry vertical, with responsibility for driving performance of the company's $14 billion, worldwide business portfolio of 1,200 banking clients. Before that, he led strategy and business development for IBM's Financial Services Strategy and Solutions division.

Globalization of the business was one of the biggest challenges Greene encountered at IBM, he said during the conference call, adding that he hopes to tackle the same issue at Fair Isaac:

"Understanding how to gain a footprint and grow it in those international operations, I think was the key success for IBM's financial services business and it's very much the kind of work that I look forward to do here at Fair Isaac. There are huge opportunities in markets that we're not well serving at the moment and I'd like to see growth in those areas."

Earlier in his IBM career, Greene served as vice president of IBM's SecureWay software business group, focused on e-business infrastructure products, and played a central role in developing IBM's electronic commerce software strategy as cofounder of the company's e-commerce initiative now known as IBM WebSphere. Prior to joining IBM, he served in leadership roles with companies including Technology Solutions Company (New York), Berkeley Investment Technologies and Citicorp. He began his career in 1982 as an economist with the Federal Reserve Board.

Greene immediately assumed his new duties. He succeeds interim CEO Charles Osborne, who will remain with the company as chief financial officer, a position he has held since 2004. Osborne assumed the role of interim CEO in November 2006, following the resignation of former CEO Thomas Grudnowski.