Less than a year after it was spun off from the timber company Temple-Inland Inc., Guaranty Financial Group Inc. of Austin is searching for a replacement for its longtime chief executive.
The $15 billion-asset Guaranty announced late Wednesday that Kenneth R. Dubuque had resigned as chairman, president, and CEO. Mr. Dubuque, whose resignation took effect immediately, had been president and CEO since 1998 and was named chairman in August.
John T. Stuart 3rd, a director of the company, will replace Mr. Dubuque as interim chief CEO and chairman. Kevin J. Hanigan, a senior executive vice president and chief banking officer, will become president and chief operating officer.
Guaranty gave no reason for Mr. Dubuque's departure and did not give a timetable for naming a permanent successor.
So for now it is up to the interim executives to try to turn around a company that has not had a profitable quarter since the spinoff from Temple-Inland in late December.
Losses in both its securities and construction loan portfolios continue to pile up, and Guaranty's shares, which began trading at around $16, have lost about 90% of their value. They were trading at 70 cents late Thursday.
The company reported a loss of $162 million in the third quarter and it has lost $257 million year to date.
Its loan losses are concentrated primarily in its portfolio of construction and development loans in California, one of the states hardest hit by the real estate downturn.
Guaranty said its ratio of nonperforming assets to total assets was 5.02% at the end of the third quarter, compared with 1.35% a year earlier, and unrealized losses in the mortgage-backed securities portfolio, which is made up largely of non-agency-backed mortgages, were $1.2 billion.
Guaranty raised $600 million in fresh capital in July.
