James J. Kavanaugh

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Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

James J. Kavanaugh is the Chief Financial Officer of IBM. As CFO, Mr. Kavanaugh plays a key role in advancing IBM’s transformation into an AI-driven and hybrid cloud enterprise. He is responsible for aligning financial strategy with IBM’s portfolio shift toward open, secure, and scalable platforms, supporting innovation across AI, automation, and data-driven services.

Appointed CFO in January 2018, Mr. Kavanaugh oversees accounting and controllership, financial planning and analysis, tax, internal audit, investor relations, corporate strategy, corporate development and treasury. He also leads the IBM Financing business, which plays a critical role in enabling client adoption of IBM’s hybrid cloud and AI technologies. He reports directly to IBM's Chief Executive Officer, Arvind Krishna.

He was previously senior vice president, Transformation & Operations, a position he held since January 2015 where he was responsible for enabling IBM’s transformation to a data driven, AI-first enterprise. In this capacity, Mr. Kavanaugh was responsible for redesigning IBM’s operating model to align with fundamental market shifts and driving new ways of working while incorporating speed and agility through the enterprise. Mr. Kavanaugh, as CFO, continues to oversee Transformation & Operations for IBM, including the Chief Information Office, the Global Chief Data Office, Enterprise Operations & Services, and Real Estate Operations—areas critical to embedding AI, analytics, and intelligent workflows across IBM’s global operations.

Prior to this role, Mr. Kavanaugh was IBM's Controller from May 2008 until January 2015. Before that, he held various finance leadership positions, responsible for covering all strategic and operational financial management, which included the vice president of finance for: IBM's Sales and Distribution worldwide, IBM's Americas Group covering the United States, Canada and Latin America and IBM EMEA, located in Paris, France overseeing 124 countries.

Mr. Kavanaugh joined IBM in 1996 from AT&T Corporation, where he was the chief financial officer, Americas Global Services. He currently sits on the T-Mobile US Board of Directors. He earned his Master of Business Administration from The Ohio State University and Bachelor of Science from the University of Dayton.