Company Leadership

As Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Sabre Holdings, Jeff Jackson leads a diverse and talented team of finance and planning employees across the United States, Europe and South America. He and his team direct many of the company’s corporate functions, from accounting, tax and financial analysis, to strategic planning, corporate development and real estate. During his 10 years with Sabre, Jeff has played pivotal roles in the company’s largest mergers and acquisitions, most recently the 2007 sale of Sabre to private-equity firms TPG and Silverlake and the 2005 acquisition of lastminute.com. Earlier deals include the sale of the outsourcing business to EDS, and the IPO – later followed by the buyback – of Travelocity, where he served on the board while it was a public company.

With the exception of an odd, eight-month stint in advertising right out of college, Jeff has what easily could be considered one of the typical career paths of a CFO. He’ll tell you that it was the experience gained during his 14 years with American Airlines while it was growing and buying airplanes that best prepared him for life in the C-suite. Spending most of his time in Corporate Development and Treasury, including serving as the department’s vice president, he gained expert-level knowledge in cross-border leverage tax leasing and traveled extensively in Europe and Japan to strengthen the company’s relationships in banking and finance around the world. He also played a key role in Sabre’s separation from American Airlines and its eventual IPO. After spending much of his last year as the airline’s Controller, he made the jump from parent company to child in 1998 to become Sabre’s CFO.

Although he clearly has a strong technical financial background, Jeff cites collaborating with and counseling across the company’s businesses as the part of his job that he’s most passionate about. He also employs that passion outside the company, providing financial and strategic counsel as a board member for Parago, a leader in customer relationship management, and Rent-A-Center, a rent-to-own retail services provider.

In his personal time, Jeff is actively involved in the Dallas art community and currently is helping with fundraising efforts for Southern Methodist University’s Division of Art. He also champions the Katy Trail project to develop and maintain the urban greenbelt and is a former board member of KERA, the local public broadcasting station.

A native New Yorker, Jeff all but cut his teeth on a hockey puck and is a die-hard fan to this day. At age 18, he spent a year in Sweden as part of a cultural exchange program and learned to speak fluent Swedish. He played lacrosse – his second love in sports – for Dartmouth College while earning his bachelor’s degree in economics/government, and later earned his master’s in management at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

About Sabre Holdings Corporation

Sabre Holdings connects people with the world’s greatest travel possibilities by retailing travel products and providing distribution and technology solutions for the travel industry. Sabre Holdings supports travelers, travel agents, corporations, government agencies and travel suppliers through its companies: Travelocity, Sabre Travel Network and Sabre Airline Solutions. Headquartered in Southlake, Texas, the company has approximately 9,000 employees in 59 countries. More information is available at http://www.sabre-holdings.com.