Monday profile: Andy Haste

Lauded for the salvage operation he led at the formerly shambolic operations of RSA, Andy Haste has earned the right to be taken seriously in his ambitious multi-billion pound bid for the general insurance business of UK rival Aviva.

He currently has 5 billion on the table for Aviva's motor, home and casualty insurance businesses operating in the UK, Ireland and Canada. This alone would more than double the size of RSA, though there are suggestions that Haste will have to stump up more - anywhere between 10 per cent and 60 per cent more, depending on which analyst you ask.

For the moment, however, both RSA and Aviva are "working like mad" behind the scenes to sway investors in their favour. Although he leads the pursuit, it remains unclear how many of these meetings are being taken by the enigmatic Haste.

Though photographed and quoted thousands of times during the past seven years, 48-year-old Haste is notoriously publicity-shy. Unlike the flamboyant Bob Mendelsohn, his predecessor at the former Royal & Sun Alliance, the RSA chief is an extremely low-key operator of few public words, preferring instead to be defined by the moves he makes at RSA.

Even in this, he strives to remain at the edge of the spotlight pulling in others to share the credit.

The announcement of his appointment to the helm at RSA received a lacklustre response in late 2002, as both internal and external observers noted that he was a relative unknown with no direct experience of the general insurance sector. Though he had been heading up the British life and pension operations of French insurer AXA since 1999, analysts knew little of Haste, as he did not take an active role in investor briefings while at AXA.

Though not the obvious candidate, RSA's board were swayed to a great extent by a personal recommendation from Jack Welch, former boss of GE Capital, who used to employ Haste. Welch considered Haste to be a well-seasoned winner in financial services, and highlighted the fact that he had done a good job at AXA even though he had no experience in life insurance before joining the French group.

The mess that greeted Haste at his new job is well-documented, with years of losses having piled up following the botched merger of Royal and Sun Alliance to create what is now RSA. Haste tackled his herculean task in stoic fashion, cutting thousands of jobs and offloading non-core businesses.

These and other disposals had initially been expected to raise no more than a 300 million profit on book value. However, by the end of his first 90 days, Haste had already closed the hole on the 600m capital deficit he had inherited. Investors began warming to their unknown boardroom warrior.

Described as a hands-on operator, one of the first things Haste did was to abandon a swanky office at RSA's Mayfair headquarters in favour of a larger but far more spartan billet. His dress-down style is supplemented by a stash of ties kept near his desk in case he has to make an unexpected presentation.

Prior to taking the helm at RSA, Haste is credited as having re-energised AXA Sun Life, but missed out on the top job at AXA UK after the group elected to appoint Dennis Holt to replace outgoing chief executive Mark Wood in 2001.

His experience in turning around faltering operations was therefore another reason why the RSA board was drawn to him as their saviour. The battered insurer had already been forced to draw up a radical retrenchment scheme after disgruntled shareholders made it clear they would not support yet another rights issue to bail out the floundering business.

His performance earned him 1.4m in his first nine months at RSA, reflecting the vast amount of work needed to repair the group's tattered balance sheet. As RSA's fortunes began to stabilise and then flourish, talk inevitably turned to where Haste might be headed next.

His name has since been bandied about for nearly every potential insurance job going, including top posts at Zurich Financial Services, Prudential and even current prey Aviva. If his audacious plan to take over the latter's general insurance business fails, look for the rumour mill to start cranking out gossip once again.

BACKGROUND

Born in 1962, Andy Haste began his career with Natwest, where he worked for 16 years. He then joined GE Capital, where he was in charge of the European consumer finance business.

His move to AXA Sun Life in 1999 was marked by a bungled stock exchange announcement, which prematurely revealed his appointment as chief executive even though Haste was still under contract with GE Capital. The statement was pulled later the same day, but news of the move was out.

He joined RSA as chief executive in 2003 as a relative unknown, but quickly gained respect for restoring the former basket case into a respected FTSE 100 company.