Argo Group Ltd.'s new chief financial officer Jay Bullock is looking forward to putting his advice into practice when he takes on the role at the Bermuda-based specialty insurer and reinsurer this week.

For Mr. Bullock, who lists a number of top financial institutions including Bear Stearns on his impressive CV, will get the chance to apply the work he has being doing focusing on the insurance sector advising on underwritings, acquisitions, restructurings and merchant banking opportunities, to the real time scenario of handling capital management and financial reporting at Argo.

And he is also relishing the opportunity to connect with the companies and contacts he has built up in Bermuda during his career.

Last week Argo reported that it had boosted profits by almost 50 percent for the first quarter of 2008, with net income rising from $35.1 million for the same period in 2006 to $36.9 million.

That followed the merger of PXRE Corporation and Argonaut Group in August last year and Argo made an offer to acquire Lloyd's insurer Heritage Underwriting Agency plc. for £136 million ($269.7 million) earlier this year.

Mr. Bullock, who starts his new job on May 13 and will be based on the Island, explained he has known Argo president and CEO Mark Watson III for a number of years, having worked on several of his projects, including one of the company's early acquisitions, before the idea of actually working for his organisation came up a few months ago.

"That kept getting more interesting as he explained some of the things they were going to do, like the acquisition on Heritage, and so it came to the right time to make the decision to join Argo," he said.

In his new post, Mr. Bullock will be charged with helping to build on the business plan which has served the company so well, with a focus as a specialty re/insurer on operations in all of the key markets, dealing specifically with capital management and all the financial aspects of the job.

"I was attracted to it and and Mark (Watson) wanted to have me involved because of the history of my work," he said.

"It is a challenge and maybe that is what makes it exciting for me because the business has changed quite a bit in the last few months, with the merger with PXRE and the proposed acquisition of Heritage in London.

"I think the most attractive thing was that Mark had achieved much of the strategy that he wanted to achieve and now I get to come in and make my impact from a capital and efficiency standpoint on a global platform."

Mr. Bullock was most recently a senior managing director in Bear Stearns' Financial Institutions Group, concentrating on the insurance sector, looking specifically at the mid and small capital specialty property and casualty sector, the global life reinsurance sector, and the life insurance sector and property and casualty reinsurance sectors.

But he admitted that he did not see the collapse of Bear Stearns coming back in March of this year, with profits plunging 79 percent and JPMorgan Chase stepping in to snap up the big US investment bank.

"It was a fantastic experience and a tremendous group of individuals to work with there and we are all quite saddened by the way things happening in the end," he said.

"But I suppose the one silver lining is that there is a broad network of extremely bright colleagues that are ending up in different places working for new firms now.

"I did not envisage it happening - it was really tragic."

Among some of the main transactions Mr. Bullock made at Bear Stearns were numerous capital raises for Scottish Re, advising on Scottish Re's acquisitions of ERC Life and ING Life Re, the recapitalisation of American Capital Access, advising Benfield on its acquisition of EW Blanch, and advising on the sale of Penn America and The Front Royal Group, both specialty property and casualty carriers.

Prior to joining Bear Stearns, he was a managing director at First Union Securities. He is also a Chartered Professional Accountant and is a graduate of Southern Methodist University, with honours, and holds an MBA from The McColl School of Business, Queen's College in Charlotte, North Carolina.

But for now Mr. Bullock is just excited about the new challenge which lies ahead at Argo and the chance to team up with Mr. Watson again.

"I am looking forward to the new job and I think that the season this made so much sense for me and for Argo was that Mark and I have had a like-minded vision," he said.

"I have been giving advice for a long time and now is the opportunity to put it to some practical use.

"I have been dealing with companies in the Bermuda for a long time and in most of the organisations I know a lot of people and I am really looking forward to connecting with them on a peer level instead of a vendor level for once."