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© St. Petersburg Times, published November 15, 2002
For a company that buys other companies at a breakneck pace, Brown & Brown Inc. certainly takes the long-term approach to mapping out management changes.
J. Hyatt Brown, chief executive of the insurance brokerage founded by his father, on Thursday named a top lieutenant, Jim Henderson, as the company's president and chief operating officer.
The appointment serves a dual purpose: Brown, a former speaker of the state House, will give up some oversight of his fast-expanding and far-flung enterprise. And he sets up a succession plan for an organization that is intricately associated with him.
But don't look for a quick transition. Brown, 65, does not plan to retire for another seven years.
"There's really no time frame" for a succession, said Henderson, 56, who plans to run the company after Brown's eventual retirement and "provide a transition" for the next CEO.
Henderson, who joined the organization as chief financial officer in 1985, said the gradual shift gives time for an emerging group of young executives to gain experience.
One of those moving up the ranks is J. Powell Brown, J. Hyatt Brown's 35-year-old son.
On Thursday, the company promoted J. Powell Brown, and Charles Lydecker, 39, to executive vice presidents and gave a regional executive vice president, Linda Downs, 51, additional responsibilities. There are now seven executive vice presidents.
Company spokesman Doug Hudson said the promotion of the CEO's son does not necessarily signify that Powell Brown eventually will run the company. "Hyatt doesn't work that way," he said.
Brown & Brown, formerly known as Poe & Brown, was formed nine years ago by the merger of Brown's general insurance agency with Poe & Associates of Tampa. The company still maintains dual headquarters in Daytona Beach and Tampa though most of the top management, including Brown and Henderson, work out of the Daytona site.
Brown has grown into the sixth-largest independent insurance brokerage in the country using a simple formula: dozens upon dozens of acquisitions of small, mom-and-pop operations.
In the past two years, Brown has grown at a 35 percent clip, buying 24 small agencies in 2001 and 20 so far this year.
The publicly traded company expects about $460-million in revenue in 2002, up from $365-million a year ago, with two-thirds of the growth coming from acquisitions and one-third organic. Brown and Brown closed Thursday at $32.59 a share, up $1.12 or 3.6 percent.
Brown has said he wants to grow annual revenues to $1-billion within three years, requiring a growth rate of at least 25 percent. To get there, Henderson said he will consider larger deals, but he is not abandoning the game plan.
The smaller deals "involve a degree of risk that is simpler because of their size," Henderson said in a phone interview from California, where he had recently completed another acquisition.
"We prefer to do the small ones only, but it does take a lot of them."
-- Jeff Harrington can be reached at harrington@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3407.