Khanh Tran doesn’t consider himself a typical chief financial officer.
“I’m not a CPA. I’m not a lawyer and I’m not an actuary,” said Tran, who’s held the top finance position at Newport Beach-based Pacific Life Insurance Co. since 1996. “I’m more of a corporate finance and business person.”
Tran’s style seems to have served him well during the downturn for Pacific Life, the county’s largest private company.
He was instrumental in raising $1 billion for the insurer amid the financial crisis in 2009 and then another $450 million last year.
“We went out and raised more capital than we needed because we didn’t know if the second shoe was going to drop,” he said.
In all, Tran has helped raise $2.2 billion in the past two decades for Pacific Life, which sells insurance policies and investments to individuals, companies, pension funds and others.
Tran received the Private Company award at last week’s CFO of the Year awards presented by the Business Journal and the Orange County and Long Beach chapter of the California Society of Certified Public Accountants.
He oversees finance at the county’s largest private company. Pacific Life’s parent company, Pacific Mutual Holding Co., has yearly sales of more than $5 billion.
The company ended 2009 with $110 billion in assets, up from $96.9 billion a year earlier, according to the Pacific Life’s latest financial statements. 2010 results are due in March.
When Tran became Pacific Life’s treasurer and head of corporate development in 1991, the company had about $10 billion in assets, or 10% of what it has now.
The financial crisis presented a challenge for Pacific Life as it and other insurers came under scrutiny after the near collapse of American International Group Inc.
“We scaled back our growth and wanted to preserve capital,” said Tran, who oversees the company’s accounting, audit, risk management, tax, treasury and strategic planning operations.
He’s also responsible for a big non-insurance business: Aviation Capital Group Corp., one of the largest aviation leasing companies with a fleet of about 240 jets and some 100 airline customers in 40 countries.
Joined Board
Tran was elected to Pacific Life’s board of directors in 1997. Four years later, he was promoted to executive vice president.
He’s worked on some of the most significant deals at Pacific Life: the 1992 acquisition of San Diego’s First Capital Life Insurance Co.; 1993’s start of a variable annuities division; and the staggered sale of Pacific Life’s stake in onetime subsidiary Pacific Investment Management Co.
The sale of its stake in bond fund manager Pimco, which wrapped up in 2008, brought in more than $3 billion for Pacific Life.
“We’ve done more transactions than a typical nonpublic insurance company,” said Tran, a Vietnamese immigrant who overcame tough odds to make his mark.
He came to the U.S. at 18.
During spring break in his second year at Whittier College, he returned home to find his country overrun by a communist government. Tran didn’t know where his family was.
It was a moment he said he’ll never forget. But that difficult time gave him a perspective that served him during the worst days at the office.
Pacific Life Chief Executive James Morris wondered how Tran could be so calm during the recent downturn. Tran told Morris if he had a similar upbringing, he would take the ups and downs of the market more in stride, too.
“This isn’t life and death,” Tran said. “This is business. We’ll get over it.”
Many of Tran’s countrymen—including his wife—were stuck in Vietnam for years and overcame enormous obstacles to escape.
He said his wife left in an overcrowded boat without a compass. Lost at sea, she ended up in a Thai refugee camp for six months.
“I’m fortunate I didn’t have to endure that,” said Tran, who became a U.S. citizen in 1980.
Home Life
Tran moved to Huntington Beach in 1988. In 1993, he moved his family to Irvine for the public schools. He and his wife have three girls, ages 10, 13 and 25.
Tran said he is proud of his long tenure at Pacific Life and for his work helping the insurer grow to one of the largest in its industry.
He said was surprised to hear his name called during the CFO of the Year awards ceremony in Irvine last week.
“I feel it’s an honor having seen the nominees,” Tran said. “I consider myself very, very fortunate.”
