Robert V. La Penta

Robert V. LaPenta "is Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer of L-1 Identity Solutions. He has more than 30 years of executive management experience and has generated billions of dollars of shareholder wealth throughout his professional career. Mr. LaPenta founded L-1 Investment Partners in June 2005, leaving his position as president, CFO and board member of L-3 Communications to launch the company.

"Mr. LaPenta co-founded L-3 Communications in 1997, following a successful 24-year executive career at Loral Corporation. He and his partners formed L-3 (which stands for Lanza, LaPenta and Lehman Brothers) as a leveraged buyout of ten advanced electronics business units from Lockheed Martin. Lockheed had merged with Loral Corporation in the prior year and Mr. LaPenta was CFO of Loral at the time of the merger. As president, CFO and board member of L-3, he guided the company to $8 billion in annual revenue, EBITDA growth from $60 million to $1 billion and a stock-price appreciation from $5 to $170 pre-split. Mr. LaPenta also founded the Homeland Security Business, with annual revenues exceeding $700 million.

"During his seven-year tenure with L-3 Communications, the company completed more than 60 acquisitions, creating 60 individual business units run as separate entities under a common management approach that generated billions of dollars of shareholder wealth. While at Lockheed Martin and Loral Corporation, Mr. LaPenta served as corporate vice president and CFO of the C4ISR Group of Lockheed Martin from 1996 -1997, where he led the Command, Control, Computer, Communication, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance business sector with over $8 billion in annual revenue. As corporate vice president for Loral Corporation from 1972 to 1996, he grew revenue from $20 million to $7 billion and EBITDA from a $5 million loss to $900 million."


 * Board of Regents, Potomac Institute for Policy Studies