|
Conseco in shakeup at top
|
 |
April 28, 2000: 4:23 p.m. ET
Financial services company also posted earnings well below estimates
|
NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Financial services company Conseco Inc. announced a shakeup in its top management Friday as it reported financial results well below analysts' expectations.
The company said that Stephen Hilbert, chairman and chief executive, and Rollin Dick, chief financial officer, are leaving the company effective immediately. David Harkins, a Conseco director and president of Thomas H. Lee Partners, will serve as interim chairman and CEO.
 "This has been one of the toughest decisions Conseco's board and I have ever made," said the 54-year-old Hilbert, who helped found the company in 1979. "Over the last few quarters it became clear that my and Rollie's ability to engender investor confidence was impaired."
Dick, 68, has been Conseco's CFO since 1986.
Shares of the Carmel, Ind.-based Conseco (CNC: Research, Estimates) closed Friday at 5-3/8, down 1-5/8.
Conseco will proceed with plans to sell Conseco Finance in order to concentrate on its core insurance business, said a statement from Harkins, whose firm invested in the troubled concern in December.
The resignations mark the culmination of a downward spiral that began in 1998 when the company bought Green Tree Financial -- now Conseco Finance -- the top U.S. mobile-home financier. Green Tree came with a reputation for questionable accounting practices and applicant discrimination, according to research firm Hoover's Online. Then the bottom fell out of the mobile-home finance industry, further adding to Conseco's problems.
 For the first quarter, the company reported earnings from operations of $107 million, or 30 cents a diluted share. That is well below the 56 cents a share predicted by analysts surveyed by earnings tracker First Call. The company had earnings from operations of $301.3 million, or 91 cents a share, a year earlier.
Net investment losses and charges for losses on loan guarantees brought net income down to $77.4 million, or 22 cents a share, down from $287.8 million, or 87 cents a share, a year earlier.
Total managed assets rose to $101.5 billion at the end of the quarter, up 13 percent from a year earlier. 
|
|
|
|
|
|
Conseco
|
Note: Pages will open in a new browser window
External sites are not endorsed by CNNmoney
|
|
|
|
 |
|
