Big exec moves made their share of headlines in OC last week.
Pacific Life Insurance Co. said Chief Executive Jim Morris plans to retire April 1, 2022, and will be succeeded by Chief Financial Officer Darryl Button.
Button joined the insurance giant in 2017. He will become the 15th CEO in Pacific Life’s 154-year history. Pacific Life, famous for those jumping whale ads, is among the three biggest revenue generators based in Orange County, reporting $11.5 billion in 2020 sales.
See Katie Murar’s front-page story on the exec changes at FivePoint Holdings LLC. The appointment of Lennar’s Stuart Miller to the executive chairman role has led to speculation that the Miami-based housing company could bring the developer of Irvine’s Great Park Neighborhoods back under its umbrella, 12 years after it was spun out.
To learn more about the future of the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, see Murar’s page 18 story on plans for a new Disney Vacation Club tower at the Disneyland Hotel.
To hear about Disneyland’s past, the Insider recommends Richard Snow’s book, “Disney’s Land,” which was excerpted in the Business Journal early last year.
That excerpt, “How Walt Disney Picked Anaheim,” triggered “a great many memories of myself at that particular time,” noted Newport Beach real estate exec Harry Rinker, in a follow-up letter that we ran last year as well.
In that letter, the then 98-year-old Rinker recalled the late 1950s when he found “an attractive site on the northwest corner of Harbor and Katella,” a short walk from what’s now OC’s main tourism draw.
After building a service station on a portion of the site, he soon sold off the bulk of the property for some motels and other uses.
“The reason in 1957 I failed to recognize the eventual value of that 10-acre corner was that neither I nor anyone else at that time thought Disneyland would be anything more than a wide place on the road with a few of the amenities,” he noted.
Rinker’s recollections, “My Biggest Regret: That Corner Lot in Anaheim,” was one of our better-received Leader Board items last year and documented a rare misstep for the Rinker Co. founder, who had an 80-year career in real estate development and investments.
Rinker died last week in his Newport Beach home, at the age of 100 and a half.
Among his community work, Rinker served on the board of trustees for Chapman University since 1976.
He and his wife, Diane, contributed $15 million to establish the Harry and Diane Rinker Health Science Campus in Irvine for the university.
“My favorite board of trustee committee was the Real Estate Committee,” Chapman President Emeritus Jim Doti told the Business Journal. “I think that was mainly because I had the privilege of watching Harry Rinker in action. He had the uncanny ability of zeroing in on the substance of an issue. When Harry spoke, we all followed—even George Argyros.”
Doti and colleague Raymond Sfeir penned this week’s Leader Board (see page 69), which questions the state controller’s explanation for why so many Californians are leaving the state.
