Mark Ram Retiring From Northbridge!

[Parsad]

Damn, one of the best young insurance executives in the industry is retiring after 20 years of service.  Mark Ram is going to play some golf!  Good luck to him!  Cheers!

 

http://www.fairfax.ca/news/press-releases/press-release-details/2011/Fairfax-Financial-Holdings-Limited-Northbridge-Executive-Changes1125044/default.aspx

[biaggio]

Parsad, how old would he roughly be?

 

If remember correctly from annual meeting, he is awfully young to retire.

 

Good for him.

 

Is there anything else we should read into this announcement?

[bluedevil]

If I had to guess, MR left to eventually pursue other opportunities at a bigger operation.  He has run Northbridge for six years now, and was the President of Markel for eleven years before that.  He is still quite young (around 45?) but given FFH's decentralized operation (and Andy Bernard's recent promotion to head of all Fairfax insurance operations) I think he ran into the very high-class problem of being (1) young and (2) having no more room to rise.

[Parsad]

Fairfax's bench is pretty deep and decentralized, so there are already viable candidates to replace existing management at virtually every sub.  Mark is at the top of the Canadian subs, and it was probably unlikely he would be stepping into the U.S. or International sides, since each already has qualified replacements. 

 

I think he's probably going to take some time and spend it with his family...he's been working for Fairfax since he was out of college, I believe...and then probably decide the next logical step.  Silvy Wright knows as much about Northbridge as Mark, so I don't think it will miss a beat.  Cheers!

[ERICOPOLY]

It's a small world.

 

When I quit/retired from Microsoft I had a picnic with an old coworker/friend (Rob) who left the company a few years ahead of me.  He asked me how in the hell I pulled it off and I explained to him the Fairfax calls.  Unknown to me, he had not only heard of Fairfax and Prem, but had actually met Prem at a company headquarters visit.  It turns out that back around 1998 or so Rob was an intern for Mark Ram and worked on programming some underwriting software for him. At the time Rob was still a student at University of Waterloo.  

 

Imagine the chances of that.

[Uccmal]

He holds 12000 shares of FFH - I guess he can afford to retire, if he wants.  Probably made a killing via NB as well when it was bought back in at a 30% premium.