It was once one of SA’s most powerful listed companies; now it is the junior member of the life insurance sector. Can the flame burn brightly again at Liberty, or is the group destined to become a placid cash cow? One might ask what has become of the mighty Liberty, a company once numbered among the five largest on the JSE. Few SA businessmen have been the subject of more case studies than Donald Gordon, founder of Liberty Life back in 1957. Like Discovery today, Liberty was seen as the leading entrepreneurial business in the sector. It was the crucible for products which remain standard fare, such as retirement annuities and unit-linked investment policies.Ruck greatly underestimated the complexity of life insurance, which he considered to be a simple business of collecting premiums and paying claims. On instructions from Standard Bank, he sold Liberty’s only significant overseas asset, Liberty Ermitage, and scrapped the group’s plans to expand abroad in such disparate jurisdiction...
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