Mike Wells could scarcely be less like Tidjane Thiam. The man in the frame to be the next chief executive of Prudential is an American with a fiendish grasp of the technicalities of pension products — think variable annuities.
Mr Wells, 54, is as apple pie as they come. Wide and well-built, he has been described by Eamonn Flanagan, a Shore Capital analyst, as having “an actuary’s grasp of the numbers, trapped inside the body of a Baywatch lifeguard”. He almost certainly would win an arm-wrestling contest with his predecessor.
Although Mr Thiam can still be seen (when he’s not sulking about the performance) alongside his young son at Arsenal football matches in north London on a Saturday afternoon, Mr Wells’ son Tom is in a soft-rock band that has played gigs in China.
Mr Wells has been with the Pru nearly four times longer than the present group boss — he will be celebrating his twentieth year with the business this year, against Mr Thiam’s six. He joined the insurer in 1995 as president of the marketing and distribution division of Jackson National Life in the United States, a part of the Pru empire, where he has been ever since.
After several internal promotions, Mr Wells’ elevation to the top job for the group in America came in late 2010, when Clark Manning, the chief executive at the time, revealed plans to leave after 15 years with the group. Mr Wells took charge at the beginning of 2011, in the wake of speculation that the Pru was preparing to offload the division.
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In his in-tray, he will find renewed speculation that the Pru might consider a break-up and persistent worries in some quarters that its Asian growth engine will stall at some point.
Currency fluctuations in some Asian countries have also been a headache, and low interest rates represent a threat to investment earnings.
In the short term, however, Mr Wells may well turn his eye to the property market: he will have to run the group as it stands from headquarters in London.