Hiscox announced the appointment of Colin Keogh (pictured, left), the company’s senior independent director, as its new interim chair following the tragic death of Jonathan Bloomer (pictured, right), its former chairperson, at the age of 70. Bloomer was appointed as Hiscox’s chair in June last year.
Late last week, the company confirmed that Bloomer and his wife Judy were among the casualties in the tragic sinking of the Bayesian super yacht off the coast of Sicily on August 19. According to a report by the BBC, the yacht was caught in a turbulent storm. Only seven out of 22 passengers, including the captain and the crew, survived the deadly incident.
Citing Bloomer’s obituary published by The Telegraph, an AM Best report said that the late Hiscox chief was chairman of Morgan Stanley International, former chief executive of the Prudential insurance group, and a defense witness in the US trial in which the tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch was acquitted of fraud. It has been said that evidence presented by Bloomer in the San Francisco fraud trial was reportedly crucial to Lynch’s successful defense.
Before his stint at Hiscox, Bloomer became a partner at Arthur Andersen before becoming the chief financial officer of Prudential in 1995 and then served as the company’s chief executive from 2000 to 2005. Following this, he was an operating partner at Cerberus Capital Management, the US private equity and alternative investor, which he held between 2006 and 2012, according to an AM Best report. Furthermore, since 2012, Bloomer had pursued a successful portfolio career, with a range of largely financial services companies, the report added.
Meanwhile, the incoming interim chair has served as non-executive director for Virgin Money for almost 10 years – from January 2010 to October 2019, based on his LinkedIn account. Keogh also served in the same capacity at M&G from 2016 to 2022 and was the chairman of Premium Ltd. for seven years (from October 2015 up to October 2022), while serving as a senior independent director for Hiscox from November 2015 until he was appointed interim chair for the company.
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