NU Online News Service, June 14, 3:13 p.m. EDT
Troubled bond insurer Ambac says David Wallis, its president and CEO, and Kevin Doyle, senior vice president and general counsel, have resigned.
Diana Adams, 48, a senior managing director with New York-based Ambac, was named to replace Wallis effective July 7. She was also named a director of both Ambac Financial and Ambac Assurance, effective July 7.
Stephen Ksenak was named to succeed Doyle as general counsel effective July 30.
The company gave no reason for the resignations. A company spokesman said the resignations are for personal reasons.
Both Wallis, 51, and Doyle, 54, will remain at Ambac working on a plan to bring the company out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy prior to July 6 when its legal period to file for reorganization ends.
Wallis also resigned as director of Ambac Assurance Corp., but remains a director of Ambac Financial.
Adams is Ambac's chief administrative officer, responsible for human resources, technology and administration. She is a member of the board of Ambac's United Kingdom subsidiary, Ambac Assurance UK Ltd.
She joined the company in 2000. She came to Ambac after the wind down of an international joint venture between the company and MBIA.
Prior to that, she was a vice president at JP Morgan, and before that she was with Mitsubishi Bank and Merrill Lynch.
In a statement, Michael Callen, chairman of Ambac, praised Wallis for leading "the company admirably during extremely trying times," and called Doyle "a highly valued general counsel."
He says Adams is a "highly regarded leader within Ambac" and her skills "make Diana a worthy successor to David Wallis."
In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Ambac says Adams' base salary will be raised from $450,000 to $650,000 when she takes over the position.
On Friday, the company announced that Wisconsin Commissioner of Insurance Theodore K. Nickel named Roger A. Peters as a consultant to administer the segregated account of Ambac Assurance Corp.
Peters is currently the deputy administrator of the division of regulation and enforcement for OCI and will resign his post. He will assume his post as a consultant on or around July 1.
He will work out of the offices of Ambac in New York, reporting directly to the commissioner in Wisconsin.
Ambac Assurance is the company's principal operating subsidiary and is a guarantor of public-finance and structured-finance obligations. Domiciled in Wisconsin, the company is under rehabilitation there after running into trouble insuring credit derivatives, residential mortgage-backed securities and other structured-finance transactions.
This story was updated at 3:40 p.m. EDT
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