Garamendi Names New Chief for State’s Liquidation Office

California Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi said Monday that he had ended a six-month search for a chief executive to run the state agency that oversees more than $1 billion in assets from failed insurance companies.

Garamendi named David E. Wilson to run the Conservation and Liquidation Office, a semi-governmental organization that helps the insurance commissioner rehabilitate financially shaky insurers or sell off their assets to pay policyholder claims.

Wilson, 57, of Golden, Colo., most recently was president of his own national insurance consulting firm, which provided advice on complex rehabilitation and liquidation cases.

Wilson replaces current CEO Fred Buck, whose September 2003 appointment to the $260,000-a-year job was withdrawn by Garamendi last August after the state Senate Rules Committee said it would take no action to confirm Buck.

At the time, then-Senate President Pro Tem John Burton told Garamendi that he was troubled by conflict-of-interest allegations involving Buck.

The Conservation and Liquidation Office has been the target of a series of critical state audits over the last decade. The audits uncovered mismanagement and lack of financial oversight at the obscure agency.