Posted on 09/29/2003 3:47:33 PM PDT by Brian S
Pat McCarrell
Seattle insurance company Safeco Corp. said it is seeking a buyer for its life and investments business to focus on the more profitable property and casualty lines. The company also said it will eliminate "at least 500 positions" by the end of 2004 from the operations that won't be sold.
The life and investments business represents about $2 billion of Safeco's $7 billion in revenue last year, and generated pretax operating earnings of $237 million. The unit's assets were $23.2 billion, and its mutual fund assets under management were $4 billion at the end of the second quarter of 2003, the company said. Goldman Sachs has been retained to sell the unit, Safeco said.
The company will concentrate on the auto, homeowners and small-business lines at which it has excelled, said spokesman Chris Villiers.
"We can shoot up to the ranks of one of the top companies in property and casualty," he said. Safeco currently ranks about 14th or 15th in the country in that sector, Villiers said.
"Short range, it's a little tough medicine, but long range we see tremendous growth potential," Villiers said.
The layoffs -- mostly at the corporate headquarters in Seattle's University District -- are intended to help reach $75 million in expense savings by the end of 2004. Corporate functions currently employ about 2,500 of the company's 11,000-person work force.
"We're making dramatic changes in our company to remove everything that stands in our way of unleashing an aggressive competitor in the property-casualty insurance marketplace," Mike McGavick, Safeco chairman and CEO, said in a statement. "Safeco's best course for the future is to have a strong property and casualty focus, delivering nearly all of our products over the same sales and service platform, and through a common network of independent distributors."
© 2003 American City Business Journals Inc.
When you see a bull on the cover of Time magazine . . .
The GOP is so bloody non-existant in this state (having been crushed by the RATS for generations now), that even when this state is a half-step behind California on the rush to the cliff, still there is no GOP voice, no one anywhere in this state with the ability to take the RATS on. There are three major RAT candidates and the GOP has no one. So we'll end up with a GOP state legislator running against a RAT with all kinds of executive experience on their resume. Disgusting.
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