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John P. North Jr. has served as a Director of ProAssurance since completion of the consolidation on June 27 2001 and as a director of Medical Assurance Inc. since 1996. Mr. North is a certified public accountant who was a partner of the accounting firm of Coopers & Lybrand LLP until his retirement in September 1995..
Mr. North serves as Chairman of the Audit Committee of the ProAssurance Board of Directors. Members of the Audit Committee and the Board believe that Mr. North meets the qualifications of an Audit Committee Financial Expert based upon his long and distinguished career in the accounting profession including a top leadership role at Coopers & Lybrand.
More specifically Mr. North retired in 1995 as a partner of Coopers & Lybrand (one of the predecessor firms to PricewaterhouseCoopers) an international accounting auditing tax and consulting firm with worldwide revenue at that time of more than $5 billion.
Mr. North a native of Alabama received his BS (major in accounting) from the University of Alabama in 1957. He joined Coopers & Lybrand in 1957 served in the US Army from 1958 to 1960. Mr. North returned to Coopers & Lybrand in 1960 and served on the audit staff for several years before transition to the tax staff.
He was admitted to the partnership in 1967 as a Tax Partner and became Managing Partner of the Birmingham office in 1974. In addition to his supervisory responsibilities in the Birmingham office Mr. North were directly involved in mergers and acquisitions activities for the firm’s clients where he directly evaluated and analyzed financial statements. In 1983 he moved to Atlanta to become managing partner of the firm’s 15 Southeastern offices and served in that capacity until October 1988 when he became managing partner of the Atlanta office. In each of these positions Mr. North was responsible for the overall operation of the office or region. The offices under his responsibility performed audits of numerous public companies including Royal Crown Cola BellSouth SONOCO and Tampa Electric Company.
In October 1992 Mr. North was named Client Service Vice Chairman and in July 1993 moved to New York as Chief of Staff of Coopers & Lybrand. He served two terms as a member of the Executive Committee. As a part of his Chief of Staff and Executive Committee responsibilities the General Counsel of Coopers & Lybrand reported to Mr. North thus causing Mr. North to be particularly aware of auditing and accounting problems and particularly those that had resulted in litigation or discussions with regulators. In addition Mr. North was a member of Firm Council served as Chairman of the Firm Council Nominating Committee and Chairman of the Retirement Committee. After retirement Mr. North has continues to serve on the Retired Partners Committee of PriceWaterhouseCoopers (the successor of Coopers & Lybrand).
Mr. North presently serves as a director of ProAssurance and has been a member or chairman of the Audit Committee since he joined the Board in 1996. He also serves as a consultant to Guardsmark LLC. He was formerly a director of Ransom Industries Inc. | 