Manulife's Gori seized retirement before anyone asked him to go

financialpost.com:

Manulife Financial Corp.’s chief executive Roy Gori, who surprised some investors with an earlier-than-expected retirement announcement this week, says he never wanted to stay in the job so long that people started wondering why he just wouldn’t leave.

Australian-born Gori, 56, who has led the Toronto-based insurer and asset manager since 2017, said in an interview Thursday he looked to the famous Indian cricketer Vijay Merchant for inspiration on this front.

“He once said, ‘Retire when they ask you, Why?, not Why not?’” Gori said. “I’m humbly hoping that more people are asking ‘Why?’ for me.”

The conditions were right, he said, because Manulife has a strong successor lined up to take over in May — Phil Witherington, 47, currently head of the Asia division. The firm also has “great business momentum,” in part from a series of deals to de-risk its balance sheet, Gori said.

Manulife just signed a third such accord in the span of less than a year, it said Wednesday, with Reinsurance Group of America agreeing to reinsure $5.4 billion of reserves.

The transaction, which includes $2.4 billion in long-term care reserves, will allow Manulife to release $800 million in capital, which it plans to return to shareholders through buybacks, according to a statement.

“I sort of take a step back and look at what we’ve actually achieved over the last 12 months,” Gori said, listing off the transactions. Those began with a record deal to reinsure $13 billion of reserves with KKR & Co.’s Global Atlantic Financial Group, followed in March by plans to reinsure $5.8 billion of Canadian policies with RGA Life Reinsurance Co. of Canada.

“When you take all of those three combined, we reinsured $24 billion worth of reserves,” he said. In the