With 6,000 employees and an $800 million company behind him, Walter J. Zable seems like the antithesis of an entrepreneur.
But Ernst & Young, the big accounting and consulting firm, has named Zable one of 10 winners of its Entrepreneur of the Year awards.
Zable, 91, founded San Diego-based Cubic Corp. in 1951. He continues to serve as chairman, president and chief executive officer and is the driving force behind its successes.
Ernst & Young defines an entrepreneur as someone who owns or manages a private or public company and who is primarily responsible for the recent performance of the company. The individual must also maintain an active position in top-level management.
The award was presented in Palm Springs over the weekend.
Zable remains Cubic's day-to-day leader and retains 40 percent of the publicly traded company's shares.
Under Zable's guidance, Cubic has grown into a company with two separate business units and employs people in 84 locations around the world.
Zable, who could not be reached for comment, built his first crystal radio set as a 10-year-old schoolboy in Boston. He started Cubic in Point Loma with $5,000 cash and $20 worth of test equipment.
Among its earliest products, Cubic developed precision distance-measuring equipment and an aerial photomapping system. It also claims to have developed the nation's first electronic stadium scoreboard and a satellite surveying system that was the predecessor of today's global positioning system technology.
Today, Cubic has two primary business units: defense and transportation. The defense unit develops live-combat training systems for military forces as well as virtual training systems, engineering and tactical battlefield systems and communications electronics.
The transportation unit designs and manufactures automatic fare-collection systems for public transit projects worldwide.
For the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2005, Cubic reported $804 million in revenue and earnings of $11.6 million. Through the first nine months this year, Cubic had revenue of $616 million and net income of $17.2 million.
“For the past two decades, Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year awards have been honoring and recognizing the hard work, perseverance and ingenuity of the men and women who keep our economy vibrant by developing new products and services, creating jobs and supporting their communities – and generally making the world a better place,” E&Y's Phil Anderson said at the awards ceremony in Palm Springs.
Michael Kinsman: (619) 293-1370; michael.kinsman@uniontrib.com
