VeriFone Holdings Inc. is one of the first companies that made money fly through the air. The San Jose-based company was founded in Hawaii in 1981 with a terminal that provided electronic authorization of credit card transactions. Today, the company provides a range of point-of-sale payment systems for the financial, retail, hospitality, petroleum, government and health care industries. Verifone (NYSE: PAY) reported net revenues of $845 million in fiscal year 2009, an 8 percent drop from 2008.
THE QUICK BIO
Albert Liu is a former software engineer who speaks fluent Mandarin — he and his family moved from China to the United States when he was 9. He’s part of that cadre of Silicon Valley attorneys who have set up legal departments at virtually every company where they’ve worked. Liu even keeps a personal manual for the process, with best practices for infrastructure, policies and procedures. “I take care not to be rigidly bound by it, as every company has different needs,” he says, “but it’s a good way to get started and organized.”
