20 Under 40 - 2003 Profile: Greg Gribble

PRESSTIME

By Presstime Magazine

First Published: December 2003

Greg Gribble is a numbers guy. He has worked as an auditor, a financial analyst in mergers and acquisitions, and as a business consultant. By following the numbers, he ended up in the newspaper industry at the Denver Newspaper Agency, which publishes The Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News under a joint operating agreement.

In Gribble's view, a daily newspaper makes a very interesting business model: "You have a manufacturing environment that produces something every day, coupled with a distribution model where you have to get a product out on the doorstep every day, [and] a service model where you have customers you are trying to help every day."

As manager of business advisory services at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP in Denver, when it was retained to handle financial aspects of the JOA, Gribble so impressed the newspapers' executives they hired him in August 2001. As director of finance, says Carol H. Green, the agency's vice president of human resources and labor relations, Gribble has been instrumental in "rebuilding and modernizing [the JOA's] financial infrastructure in a short period of time."

Gribble prepares the operating and financial reports, and narratives the company presents to stakeholders. He has implemented risk-management policies; refined profit and loss analysis of new products and major projects, and conducted a full review of the agency's property and casualty insurance coverage. His insurance analysis has saved the agency nearly $2 million in premiums. Green notes, "Gribble's contribution to the JOA in a broad range of activities has been significant in making our agency successful."

Education: 1994, joint B.S. and M.A., accounting, University of Denver. Career: 1994-1997, audit associate and senior audit associate, Coopers & Lybrand LLP, Denver; 1997-1999, senior internal auditor and special projects, Orion Capital Corp., Denver; 1999-2000, financial analyst, Royal & Sun Alliance PLC/Orion Capital Corp., Farmington, Conn.; 2000- 2001, manager of business advisory services, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, Denver; 2001-present, director of finance, Denver Newspaper Agency.
Personal: Age, 33. Born, Hobbs, N.M. Single.
Diversions: Golf, hanging out with his friends, working on his house.
Connections: Denver Newspaper Agency, 400 W. Colfax Ave., Denver, Colo. 80204, (303) 892-5233, ggribble@ denvernewspaperagency. com.
Photos By Ellen Jaskol/ Rocky Mountain News