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Inder Singh started off his professional life as an engineer, only to learn that the large engineering projects that he aspired to someday lead often faced as many financial obstacles as they did engineering challenges.

So, Singh says, he went back to school and earned an MBA in finance, allowing him to redirect his career down a path populated with unique and imaginative financing deals to support engineering feats as well as business transformations.

One of the more innovative financing projects that Singh has helped to champion came along in the 1990s, when he was working as a business development executive for AT&T Corp. It seems that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was looking to upgrade its telecommunications infrastructure\u2014to the tune of $4 billion.

\u201cOther companies were just offering typical bank financing. In our case, we said, \u2018Let\u2019s do an oil barter agreement,\u2019\u201d explains Singh, who says that the proposal involved having Saudi Arabia supply $4 billion of oil to Chevron Corp., which then would pay $4 billion in cash to AT&T, which then would build Saudi Arabia a $4 billion telecommunications network.

\u201cIf you just think outside the box a little bit, bring your engineering skills, and bring some financial skills and common sense, you\u2019ll see what makes sense for three different parties. And guess what? We actually won the deal,\u201d comments Singh, who notes that the fact that Saudi Arabia may not have demanded such an imaginative financing solution is not important.

Says Singh: \u201cThe fact that we put it on the table made us stand apart.\u201d And so it goes for Inder Singh, whose imaginative approach to financing deals over the years has routinely set him apart from his finance leadership peers.\xa0\u2013Jack Sweeney