Quayle joins start-up in financial services.

WASHINGTON -- Former Vice President Dan Quayle is teaming up with the chairman of the Federal Housing Finance Board and a former official there to start a financial services holding company in Indianapolis.

R. Matthew Neff, former deputy to the chairman of the finance board, is the chief executive of the new company, Circle Investors.

Mr. Quayle is chairman of Circle's six-member executive committee, on which finance board chairman Daniel F. Evans Jr. also holds a seat.

Finance board rules allow Mr. Evans and other board members to participate in other business activities because all board seats at the agency are part time.

Planning and Products

Circle plans to offer "cradle to grave" financial planning and products, Mr. Neff said. Toward that end, the company will acquire a life insurance company or companies, he said.

Mr. Neff resigned from the finance board on July 2 to start Circle Investors and to rekindle his financial institutions practice at the Indianapolis law firm of Baker & Daniels, which he left when he joined the finance board.

"We are going to take life insurance products, and we're going to build them out," said Mr. Neff, who conceived of the company and is running its day-to-day operations.

The goal is developing new products "so that families will be better able to handle the major financial events in a life -- educating children, long-term health care, and retirement financial needs," he said.

Longtime Associates

Insurance companies are allowed to join the Federal Home Loan Bank system, which the finance board regulates.

If Circle Investors joined the system, Mr. Evans would have to divest his share of the company, a finance board official said.

The other three Indianapolis-based investors and members of Circle's executive committee are Allan B. Hubbard, who is chairman of the Indiana Republican Party and was Mr. Quayle's deputy chief of staff in the White House; William R. Neale, a longtime friend of Mr. Quayle who was active in Indiana in the Bush/Quayle reelection campaign, and Randolph P. Wilson, a director of National City Bank of Indianapolis and a former counsel to Mr. Quayle.

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