Markel President & CEO Makes Prestigious List of Brightest Canadian Leaders on the Rise
May 2, 2003, TORONTO, Ontario – Markel Insurance Company of Canada announced today that President and CEO Mark Ram has been recognized as one of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40™. Names and details of the award winners were published in the Friday April 25th edition of The Globe and Mail, and are accessible at www.globeandmail.com.
“Mark has built Markel into one of Canada’s top insurance companies, bar none,” says Prem Watsa, Chairman of Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited, Markel’s parent company, “and he’s done this in long-haul trucking insurance, historically one of the toughest areas of our industry, where so many others have been devastated. Markel has been the crucial stabilizing force upon which Canada’s trucking industry has come to rely.”
Mr. Ram is the first individual in the property and casualty insurance industry to win this prestigious award since it’s inception in 1995. The report in The Globe and Mail describes how Ram, who received a B.A. from McGill University and an M.B.A. from the Richard Ivey School of Business, transformed Markel into Canada’s largest and most successful trucking insurer. After working for four years at Fairfax Financial, the world’s largest Canadian-owned insurance group, Prem Watsa put Ram in charge of what was then the worst company in the group – nearly insolvent Markel. Only 28 years old at the time and Canada’s youngest insurance company CEO, Ram set about rebuilding the company from the ground up. Today, Markel is a top performer in Watsa’s insurance portfolio, and at 37, Ram is still the industry’s youngest CEO.
Under Mr. Ram’s leadership, Markel has emerged as a true industry leader – an innovative, service-oriented specialist that also cares greatly for the community, as demonstrated by its substantial ongoing support of The Hospital for Sick Children, where the company established a Fellowship in Leukemia Research.
Of the record 1,400 nominations for this year’s award, Ram joins 39 other talented Canadian leaders under the age of 40 who are set apart by their outstanding achievements in innovation, leadership, and vision and community involvement. The winners of this award serve as important role models for other Canadians and demonstrate the wealth of talent in our country.
Markel Insurance Company of Canada is the country’s largest trucking insurer, providing more than 50 years of continuous service to the industry. From single operators to large fleets, Markel’s unique value-added products and services are designed to provide the ultimate in outstanding support to brokers, truckers and their businesses.
For further information about Markel, please contact your Markel Regional Sales Manager (contact numbers available at www.markel.ca) or call 1-888-MARKEL-1.
