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Distinguished Career Grows Out Of Rural Texas

Point man for The Hartford’s rebound overcame Mexican-American stereotypes

By DOUGLAS S. MALAN

About 18 months after joining The Hartford Financial Services Group as the head of corporate law group, Ricardo Anzaldúa found himself and the company immersed in a volatile situation last fall.

Huge financial institutions were teetering on insolvency and markets around the world were crashing.

Looking for an infusion of capital, Anzaldúa and his team at The Hartford began working on a public stock offering. But the overall economic outlook worsened and The Hartford hemorrhaged money from investments in mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and bankrupt financial behemoth Lehman Brothers. The Hartford sought a large investor that could pump enough money into the business to keep it going.

Anzaldúa and a team of in-house lawyers and financial analysts responded to interest from New York-based Allianz Global Investors. The process went into hyperactive mode. The company’s most recent financial numbers had to be pulled together and disclosed to investors just days after the third quarter ended, and Anzaldúa’s legal team had to fast-track a comprehensive purchase agreement that bound both sides to the deal.

In 15 days, Anzaldúa closed a $2.5 billion investment transaction with Allianz. Normally, such projects take two to three months to complete.

“We knew the situation was extremely volatile,” Anzaldúa said. “The only sleep we got was when we were absolutely falling over.”

Then the government announced its Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bailout plan, and Anzaldúa again responded quickly to secure more capital for The Hartford. To qualify, the company needed to identify and acquire a distressed bank and then complete the application for TARP money—all in 30 days.

Anzaldúa led the search for a bank and several frenzied days of poring over balance sheets followed to find the right acquisition target. He coordinated outside counsel to analyze potential deals and make certain The Hartford was complying with government requirements for the bailout plan. In about three weeks, The Hartford acquired Federal Trust Bank of Florida and filed their application for TARP funds.

Earlier this summer, The Hartford qualified for $3.4 billion in federal bailout money, but before that news came, Anzaldúa had been busy working out every legal situation that could arise if the bailout money didn’t come and The Hartford was forced to sell off parts of its business.

“Any transaction to reduce our capital strain was under consideration,” said Anzaldúa, noting that the company also recently raised $900 million through a common stock offering. “The transactions we’ve closed have been critical to the company. It’s been fascinating.”

Equal Opportunity

That Anzaldúa spearheaded such monumental efforts for The Hartford might surprise some of the older people who still live in his hometown of Pharr, Texas, about seven miles north of the Rio Grande River. It’s a community of about 15,000 people where 85 percent of the population is Mexican-American, just like Anzaldúa.

“My position [at The Hartford] wouldn’t have been conceived of a generation ago” in the Mexican-American community, said the 55-year-old Anzaldúa, who is senior vice president, associate general counsel and chair of the law department’s diversity committee.

It’s a long way from the fields where he worked in Pharr when he was younger.

“I ended up picking vegetables in the fields with the other Mexican kids,” Anzaldúa said, because Mexican-Americans were unable to secure higher paying jobs.

Growing up in South Texas, “I knew I needed to get an education to improve my economic situation,” he said.

Anzaldúa said his parents, who had limited formal schooling, stressed the importance of education from the beginning and pushed him to consider the finest academic institutions.

What he saw in the Pharr school system during the 1950s and 1960s were instances of Mexican-American children being tracked toward less challenging classes. Anzaldúa resisted that and built up an academic profile that got him accepted into Brown University, where he concentrated on Latin American Studies with an emphasis on economic development.

From there, he was on a Ph.D. track in Cal-San Diego’s history program before realizing he didn’t want to teach history. After five years as a publications editor for the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at Cal-San Diego, he met a visiting lawyer at the center who showed Anzaldúa the type of economic development work he could do as a lawyer.

Anzaldúa applied to Harvard Law School and graduated in 1990.

The discrimination he faced as a youngster subsided once he left for college, he said, and within his personal experience is a lesson he shares when he’s speaking at schools around the area.

“I confronted the type of discrimination that was common to that place and time. It’s the same type of discrimination that still exists,” Anzaldúa said. “You have to dig yourself out of your situation of being stereotyped as a social undesirable and then you’re on your way. Once you distinguish yourself and you’re out, society today will embrace you.”

Before joining The Hartford, Anzaldúa was involved in high-profile legal work. After Harvard, he set out for the New York firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton where he became partner and focused on international corporate transactions. He also advised the governments of Mexico, Chile, Colombia and South Korea in their free-trade negotiations with the United States.

His pro bono efforts include serving as general counsel for the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction, a non-profit organization that helps rural communities in developing countries understand and utilize agricultural technology for economic and community development.

“It all boils down to equality of opportunity,” Anzaldúa said. •