Catalina Reviews

The mantra of the company...Our employees are "indispensable partners", every employee matters and all feedback and ideas are valued. This was not only lip serves under the old regime but truly how I felt as an employee. After over 10 years I have held a few different positions and seen management come and go. However there has been a fundamental change in the last 2 years or so...specifically starting with the transformation of Catalina 3.0. All of companies senior leadership "decided" to leave and peruse other opportunities during that time (and I do mean ALL). A speciously larger percent of the lay-offs that we were told were necessary as the company reassessed skills sets and resurrected were tenured employees (some with the company over 20 years). During all employee town-hall and internal communications we were constantly being feed the message to each do more, better, faster for less money. One leader stated "If you don't have an uncomfortable pit in the bottom of your stomach with the speed we are going, then you are not moving fast enough". Another told us "We should wake up in the morning being paranoid that we are not moving fast enough.". Really!!! Great moral boosters. On top of all that it has been my experience that Catalina uses job tiles outside of industry standards for what the job function actually entails. The job function always far outweighing the title's pay scale. Translation - calling a job one thing so they can pay far less than for what they are actually getting and expecting. All of these shady dealings are really such a shame. Catalina was (back in the day) a great place to work

TIMELINE: Apr 17, 2007 - Hellman & Friedman purchased Catalina Marketing for $1.7 billion including about $136 million of debt May 05, 2010 Catalina acquires digital coupon platforms (E-Centives) from Invenda October 10, 2011 - Hires Jamie Egasti, a 30-year Procter & Gamble veteran Jan 9, 2012 - Hires John Miles as CIO April 30, 2012 CATALINA ACQUIRES MOBILE COMMERCE INNOVATOR MODIV Media October 19, 2012 Rick Frier CFO leaves Catalina October 19, 2012 Michael Barna is names as "Interim Chief Financial Officer" June 01, 2013 - CIO John Miles abruptly leaves Catalina Feb 5, 2014 - Steven Rubinow Named EVP Chief Technology Officer March 4, 2014 - Majority stake in Catalina was sold to Berkshire Partners Because not all the interest of Catalina was sold; this was a “secondary transaction” where one private equity firm sells to another, primarily to achieve liquidity and to record an uplift in recorded carrying values where, as in this case, a minority interest continues to be held by Hellman & Friedman. September 05, 2014 - CATALINA ACQUIRES CELLFIRE April 01, 2015 - Catalina announces outsourcing Infrastructure team of 50 to India In April/June 2015 U.S. Senator Bill Nelson (Florida) requested from Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez of the federal Labor Department to expand an investigation into potential abuses in the visa program designed to attract highly-skilled foreign workers to fill U.S. jobs. In the letter, it stated that Catalina Marketing in St. Petersburg was transitioning 50 employees for replacement through an outsourcing firm called Mindtree with headquarters in India and New Jersey. This request from Senator Nelson was in addition to the request he made to Jeh Johnson Secretary U.S. Department of Homeland Security, to investigate how certain U.S. work visas are awarded to immigrants (which included the practice going on at Catalina). Because of the outsourcing, the IT department’s moral is low. The CTO, Steve Rubinow, lives in Chicago (not in St. Petersburg). Recently, Steve Rubinow hired Derek Gilbert as VP Security and Business Systems, Technology, Derek lives in Texas and on visits the offices in St. Petersburg a few days a month. A new VP was hired in February 2015 that took over the department that was being outsourced. His job was specifically to outsource 50 employees. Of the 6 Network Admins in this department, only two were spared the layoff and outsourcing. However, the new VP brought over 2 NEW network admins from his previous employer; none of the 4 being laid off were ask to fill these jobs. Since the leadership of Jamie Egasti, the overall sales have decreased and the acquisition of E-Centives, Modiv and Cellfile , that were supposed to transform Catalina from brick and mortar coupons at the cash register to a multi channel digital content company, have failed to deliver any ROI. In fact the Modiv and E-Centives businsses are "dying on the vine". Cellfire was purchased because of a POC relationship with a MAJOR retailer; this retailer did not pursue any business with Cellfire after the POC. I am not sure where this company is heading or what the "exit strategy" is for Berkshire Partners. Please be very careful when considering a position at Catalina. I have been disappointed in the leadership and the lack of true vision and focus from Jamie Egasti and Steve Rubinow. If Catalina is not sold in the next 3 to 6 months, I would not be surprised if one or both Steve and Jami will be replaced by Berkshire Partners.