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Two months after retiring, a friend asked Tony Dabbene to temporarily fill in as a chief financial officer of IHI Power Services Corp. while the full-time CFO took a leave of absence.
Dabbene agreed to take on the commitment, thinking the job would occupy his time for two, maybe three months.
When he arrived at the company’s Aliso Viejo office in March 2022, he was classified as an intern at the IHI, which provides maintenance, management and operations services for the U.S. power generation industry.
“After a couple of months, the CFO who was on leave left the company,” Dabbene told the Business Journal. “I’m still here. What turned into two, three months turned into over three years now.”
Dabbene later took on the additional role of CEO of IHI. He remains the CFO.
On May 8, Dabbene earned the Lifetime Achievement Award at the CFO of the Year Awards dinner at the Irvine Marriott on May 9.
At IHI Power, he made a name for himself by reducing employee turnover from 80% to zero, strengthening the company’s finance department and implementing a comprehensive Enterprise Resource Planning program.
Dabbene was humble about his accomplishments, though, saying he stuck to a straightforward plan.
“I think a lot of it was me setting goals early on in my career. You know, you set try to set these goals like I want to make X dollars by the time I’m 30, I want to be a manager by the time I’m 40, those kinds of things,” Dabbene said. “And you just work hard.”
It All Started in Brooklyn
Dabbene was born and raised in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. He earned his undergraduate degree in accounting from St. Francis College and a Master of Business Administration in finance from Long Island University, Brooklyn.
His career featured too many 12-hour days to count, in addition to constant travel, he said.
He landed in Orange County in 1978. His employer, at the time, asked him to “go take a look” at Southern California before he committed to a transfer.
“I landed, got to the hotel, opened the drapes to the ocean in front of me. I called my wife and said, ‘Start packing,’” he said.
Throughout his career, he’s worked for companies such as LG&E Energy, ExaDigma, EBASCO, Metalclad Corp. Working as CFO for the latter waste disposal company was the highlight of Dabbene’s 30-plus-year career.
Metalclad is the only claimant to have won a North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, case.
“We developed a hazardous waste landfill in Mexico, and we’ve spent roughly $17 million in the development of that facility,” Dabbene said. “Just before it was going to open, we were asked for some incentive by the governor (of San Luis Potosi). We refused to provide it. He did not allow the facility to open.”
The project in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, Dabbene added, had an appraised value of $90 million. But the governor opposed the project, saying the proposed landfill would be built at an area home to rare cacti.
“Because it was not opened, it could not be a business. And so, what we ended up doing under the NAFTA treaty was we filed this suit alleging a taking by Mexico,” Dabbene said.
The case went in front of an international tribunal in Washington, D.C. and Metalclad Corp. won. Mexico, however, appealed the decision, forcing a new case to be heard in Vancouver, Canada.
“We were up there for a week with more testimony,” Dabbene said. “We were a small company. Our corporate group was five people. We had a couple of attorneys and Mexico had 20 people on the other side. We were outgunned.”
Ultimately, Dabbene prevailed on the appeal. “Mexico had to write us a check.”