Mercury chief resigns
Mercury General Corp. said Monday that founder George Joseph would step down as chief executive of the Los Angeles-based insurance company, handing the reins over to 41-year-old President and Chief Operating Officer Gabriel Tirador.
“At 85, I thought it was time for a younger person to take the baton,” Joseph said in an interview.
Joseph, who founded the company in 1962, will continue to serve as chairman. In that role, he said he planned to spend more time working on the company’s underwriting methods, handling the firm’s investments and helping efforts to press the insurance industry’s agenda in Sacramento.
Joseph, who graduated with mathematics and physics degrees from Harvard after World War II, has been in the insurance business since the 1940s. He’s now ranked 698 on Forbes magazine’s annual listing of the world’s billionaires, with a fortune estimated at $1.1 billion.
Still, he says, he doesn’t have vacation homes or yachts, nor does he aspire to spend his afternoons playing tennis. He said he would be less involved with Mercury’s day-to-day operations but had no plans to fully retire.
“I tell my kids that one of the luckiest things that can occur to you is if you get a job that you look forward to going to in the morning and that you hate to leave at the end of the day,” Joseph said. “I find this business the most exciting and interesting thing that I can envision doing. As long as I can contribute, I think I’ll keep doing it.”
Tirador has been with the insurer for a decade and has been president and chief operating officer since 2001.
Also Monday, Mercury said third-quarter net income dropped to $68.2 million, or $1.25 a share, down 7% from $73 million, or $1.33, a year earlier. Net premiums written rose 1.7% to $776.2 million.
The bulk of the drop in net income was blamed on Mercury’s adding to loan loss reserves for its operations in Florida and New Jersey.
But the company said earnings were better than expected because of California operations.
The results, which beat Wall Street expectations, boosted Mercury shares up $3.76 to $55.14.
