For the CEO of Crum & Forster, Doug Libby, who voluntarily describes himself as "a contrarian," there is little not to like about the $294 million deal, closed in February, that adds First Mercury Financial Corp. to his group's specialty insurance operations.
Libby believes First Mercury's excess-and-surplus lines businesses gel perfectly with the "out-of-the-box" thinking and underwriting culture that he has ingrained in C&F's admitted specialty operations for over a decade.
The former lawyer, who once worked as general counsel for an investment banking firm, draws a parallel to the arbitrage departments of Wall Street firms as he describes his approach to the insurance business—a strategy he has followed since becoming CEO of Seneca Insurance ( now a subsidiary of C&F) in 1989.
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