In world of CFOs, Comcast's Angelakis highly rated

Michael Angelakis, Comcast Corp.'s financial guru and vice chairman, was named one of the nation's top chief financial officers by the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

The Journal rated him third, based on Comcast's return on invested capital, operating margin, dividend growth, and share buybacks over the last three years.

The top two CFOs were Karen Hoguet of Macy's Inc. and Robert Knight of Union Pacific Corp.

The Journal evaluated the financial performance of the companies in the S&P 500 index.

Angelakis, 50, was on vacation and unavailable for comment, a Comcast spokeswoman said.

Highly touted by Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, Angelakis was hired in 2007 from the private equity firm Providence Equity Partners. He is best known inside Comcast for engineering the $30 billion acquisition of NBCUniversal, a deal many view as a coup for Comcast. Comcast acquired 51 percent of NBCUniversal from General Electric in early 2011 and later acquired the remaining 49 percent in February 2013.

Angelakis also was involved in Comcast/NBCUniversal's winning bid to televise the Olympics on NBC and Comcast's decision to invest heavily into Universal theme parks.

Comcast has a market capitalization of about $150 billion and has proposed to government regulators that it purchase Time Warner Cable, the nation's second-largest cable company, for $45 billion.

"He's an extraordinary deal maker - the way he structured the NBCU deal was a work of art - but more than that, he's a terrific operating CFO," Craig Moffett, one of the nation's leading telecommunications analysts, said Tuesday of Angelakis. "Comcast is an exceedingly well-managed company, and they have Mike Angelakis to thank as much as anyone."

David Heger, senior equity analyst with Edward Jones in St. Louis, said, "From a point of view of shareholder returns, I don't think there are any complaints."

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