Insurance Broker Hungry for More Deals After 3-Way Merger

After a merger earlier this month that combined three Minnesota insurance agencies into the second-largest private broker in the state, Pat McCann is hungry for more deals.

McCann is president of the new group, which combined his firm — St. Paul-based Johnson McCann — with Apollo Insurance Agency in St. Cloud and C.O. Brown in Rochester.

The three entities together had $19 million in revenue last year. The combined firm, headquartered in St. Paul, now has about 150 employees in 12 offices offering commercial property and casualty insurance, homeowners and auto insurance, group employee benefits, and individual life and health insurance.

McCann and I spoke this week about the firm’s plans for growth, and he said they’re still looking to buy for the same reasons that brought about the merger.

“We feel that scale is going to be real important in the future if we’re going to work on larger accounts and larger groups,” McCann said. “We’re in a real competitive market, and we need to be able to step up with everything a client needs to be successful.”

Now operating under a still-unnamed holding company, the three firms exchanged equity in a three-way stock deal that kept local ownership in each office, McCann said.

“The model is about having the folks who built the business maintain involvement and have skin in the game … they are going to be most capable of managing and operating it,” he said.

McCann expects that to be the modus operandi as it searches for other firms to join the group.

“We’re buyers. If there are other folks who figure maybe they need more scale, more opportunities and more markets — if you come with us, you run your business and run it the way you like to, but have a lot more resources to take advantage of,” he said..

Johnson McCann, run by McCann and his wife, Gayle, was a Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal Best Places To Work winner last year.

The St. Cloud Times and Rochester Post-Bulletin have some local perspectives on the deal.

By Jim Hammerand
Staff Reporter – Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal

Originally published in Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal
Orignal Article can be found at http://www.bizjournals.com