Jim Lipham, retired TSYS chief financial officer, dies at age 69
Jim Lipham, the longtime chief financial officer at global credit-card and payment processor TSYS, and part of major moments in the company’s colorful history, has died a little less than three years after retiring from the company.
Suffering from lung cancer diagnosed just a few months ago, Lipham, 69, passed away Wednesday at Midtown Medical Center in Columbus.
Born James Byron Lipham on Sept. 12, 1948, in LaGrange, Ga., he was the son of the late Howard Bradley Lipham Sr. and Cleo Dukes Lipham. He was a graduate of LaGrange High School and West Georgia College (now the University of West Georgia in Carrollton).
Prior to arriving at TSYS in the 1980s, Lipham served as vice president and assistant treasurer at Synovus Financial Corp., the parent company of Columbus Bank and Trust, and before that was chief financial officer at First Federal Savings and Loan in Columbus. Early in his career, he worked as a senior accountant at Ernst & Young.
The bulk of his professional life, however, was spent with TSYS as the technology company grew from a card-processing subsidiary of Synovus to a globally expanding firm with revenues topping $2 billion and continuing to rise. Along with the title of chief financial officer, he was a senior executive vice president.
Major events during his career with the firm included management’s 1983 decision for TSYS to become a publicly traded entity on the New York Stock Exchange. There also was the 2007 spinoff of TSYS from Synovus and the $1.4 billion acquisition of Austin, Texas-based prepaid card firm NetSpend in 2013.
“We’ve been great personal friends since I came to Columbus in 1974, and Jim was as good a friend as anybody could ever hope to have,” Phil Tomlinson, the retired TSYS chairman and chief executive officer, said Friday. “He was an absolute fixture at TSYS for over 20 years, and was the guy you could always count on when it came to finances, and what we could and couldn’t spend, and what we should try to do with it (cash flow). He was there through most all of the transitional occasions that were big in the history of TSYS, and always right there on the first team.”
Troy Woods, the TSYS president who succeeded Tomlinson as chairman and CEO, also recalled Lipham’s more than quarter-century of service to the firm.
“He was heavily involved in some of the biggest milestones of our company, from the development of our TS2 platform and international expansion, to the building of our riverfront campus and many acquisitions,” Woods said in a statement. “Jim had a wonderful personality and was loved by his TSYS family. Personally, I spent more than 30 great years working with Jim, and I assure you, he will definitely be missed.”
Through the years, Lipham served on a variety of boards, including those associated with West Georgia College, Columbus Hospice, Green Island Country Club and St. Mark United Methodist Church. He also at one point was treasurer for the non-profit Columbus Habitat for Humanity.
Tomlinson reminisced about the more casual moments he shared with Lipham through the years. The financial executive loved to hunt and fish, and spend plenty of time with friends on the golf course.
“He was a guy who would always go along with all of the fun things we did at the company to raise money for United Way, crazy things that your average executive would never consider doing. But he was always a great sport about that sort of thing,” Tomlinson said. “Me and my friends will certainly miss Jim Lipham.”
Lipham’s wife, Florence, and family members will hold a funeral service for him at 11 a.m. Saturday at Striffler-Hamby Mortuary in Columbus, with interment at Parkhill Cemetery.
This story was originally published September 29, 2017 at 4:26 PM with the headline "Jim Lipham, retired TSYS chief financial officer, dies at age 69."