Hartford Financial Services CEO Liam McGee dies of cancer

Liam McGee, an Irish-born banker and insurance executive who guided Hartford Financial Services Group through a taxpayer bailout and shored up the company’s finances, has died.

The 60-year-old died on February 13 after a two-year battle with cancer. He had relocated with his family from Connecticut to California after learning he had the disease and stepping down from the insurer.

Mr McGee ran Hartford as CEO from October 2009 to the middle of 2014, turning around an insurer that had been forced into a US government rescue.

The CEO sold stock and debt to help the Hartford, Connecticut-based company repay its $3.4bn bailout, and retreated from life insurance and variable annuities to focus on property-casualty coverage.

“Liam was a man of commitment, integrity and compassion,” Hartford director Thomas Renyi said in the statement. “Liam made the tough decisions necessary to guide the company through this period.”

Hartford plunged more than 90% from its 2007 peak to its low in March 2009 of $3.33 a share amid the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

It received the second-largest bailout package among insurers under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Within six months of joining Hartford, Mr McGee had raised $1.65bn selling stock and another $1.1bn in debt.

He narrowed Hartford’s focus to property-casualty insurance in 2012 after the firm’s stock slipped to the lowest valuation relative to book value of any major insurance company.

Billionaire hedge-fund manager John Paulson, who at the time controlled the largest stake in the insurer, told Mr McGee to “do something drastic” and urged him to split the company.

“Liam McGee has led a generational transformation of Hartford, positioning it to prosper by focusing on operations with industry-leading positions,” Paulson & Co said in a statement when the CEO announced his departure.

Liam Edward McGee was born in Co Donegal in 1954. His father, an LA bus driver who worked his way into management, moved the family from Ireland to California when Liam was a child. He graduated from the University of San Diego in 1976 with a degree in biology.

He played for the university’s baseball team, was active in school government and wrote for the student newspaper.

He gave a commencement address in 2009, the year his son, Stephen, graduated from the school.

“My advice was that whatever you do in life, you have to have a deep passion for it. If you have that passion it won’t feel like work,” Mr McGee said in a 2009 interview. ”

Bloomberg