Advantage completes recapitalisation and expands board of directors
Advantage Insurance Holdings, a provider of insurance solutions for businesses and individuals, has completed a recapitalisation transaction and recruited Tom Hutton, Bruce Shewmaker and Gary Witherspoon to its board of directors.
In connection with the recapitalisation, Advantage contributed an additional $45 million of cash and investments to Advantage Life & Annuity Company, the main insurance company subsidiary of Advantage.
“We are excited to have Tom, Bruce and Gary bring their considerable talents and expertise to the Advantage board,” said Walter Keenan, chief executive officer of Advantage. “Each has highly relevant experience that will be invaluable to Advantage as we deploy new capital to support the growth of our core life insurance business.”
Hutton is managing partner of Thompson Hutton, an investment and advisement firm focused on information technology in insurance and financial services. He is the founder and CEO of New Energy Risk, a provider of risk analytics and insurance solutions for technology performance risk in renewable energy and energy savings finance. Hutton is a past CEO of White Mountains Re and Risk Management Solutions. He currently serves as a director of Toa Re America and SoFi. He previously served as a director of XL Group, SAFECO, Montpelier Re, and other publicly traded and private companies.
Shewmaker is a managing director of MVC Capital and is a senior investment professional for The Tokarz Group Advisers, LLC, MVC’s external adviser. Shewmaker also currently serves as a board member for Foliofn, Garrison Capital, MVC Partners, Velocitius B.V., Vestal Manufacturing Enterprises, Inc. and Harris & Harris Group, Inc. Prior to joining MVC, Shewmaker served as a managing director of E*OFFERING Corp., an investment banking firm. He was also president and chief executive officer of The US Russia Investment Fund and spent 10 years at Merrill Lynch & Co., where he co-founded Merrill Lynch Venture Capital.
Gary Witherspoon is associated with Copper Beech Capital, a private investment firm in Dallas, Texas. Prior to joining Copper Beech in 2005, Witherspoon was the managing partner of Witherspoon, Yeldell & Wilson, a certified public accountants, which he co-founded in 1984. He is a past chairman of the board of the Ennis Regional Medical Center. From 2006 to 2011, Witherspoon was a director of and chaired the audit committee of Medicus Insurance Holdings, from its founding in 2006 until 2011. He currently serves on the boards of Compass Datacenters; ArtBanc International; First State Bank; US Memory Care and Platform Holdings.
Appointment of the new directors has been approved by the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority and will become effective on January 1, 2014. Advantage believes that each of the new directors and continuing director David Whitefield meet the applicable requirements for independence under the rules of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and major stock exchanges.
