High Finance: The Quiet Texan

Six spirited bidders turned up last week when Western Bancorporation, a big holding company, carried out antitrust orders to sell off California's First Western Bank & Trust. Of the six, a little-known Texas insurance man named Troy Victor Post, 56, showed a clear and present advantage. Said a Bancorporation director: "Post's offer had something unique about it—money." Where most of the bidders offered complicated deferred-payment deals. Post unpocketed $69.5 million in ready cash. He quickly got First Western, which has assets of $612 million.

Big-wheeling deals are a habit with this shy Dallas millionaire, who in rimless glasses looks like a bookkeeper. His success does not involve Texas charm or high pressure, of which he has little, but simply his canny ability to fetch up more cash than anyone else. Troy Post's fortune is calculated to be at least $70 million, and he has amassed it almost wholly in the past 16 years by investing in the seemingly bland field of life insurance, where he has shown an eye for companies ready, in his words, "to take off."

Helped by the Law. A poor tenant farmer's son who had to quit high school to go to work in the mail room of a bank. Post by 1933 had saved $138, which, he used to organize the Pioneer American Life Insurance Co. in his home town of Haskell, Texas. The state's insurance laws in those days favored small local companies, and Post formed a mutual company, signed up almost everyone in town. The company grew fast during World War II, helped by a Post decision to insure G.I.s without disallowing benefits for death in combat.

Post later sold his share of Pioneer American for $37,500. used the money to buy the low-selling shares of life insurance companies that he figured were ready to move. In 1955 he bought control of American Life Insurance Co. of Birmingham, took advantage of a loose Alabama law that permits insurance companies to invest their assets heavily in common stock, including the shares of other insurance companies. Insurance stocks have boomed along with the general lifting of U.S. wealth and standards in recent years —and so has American Life. Under Post, it has increased capital and surplus 2,000% to $25.7 million, and now has $700 million worth of insurance in force.

Greater Horizons. From his assorted holdings, Post created a company whose title is fitted to his horizons: Greatamerica Corp. Its assets of $900 million make it the U.S.'s biggest life insurance holding company. Currently, it embraces American Life, Franklin Life, Gulf Life (whose control Post bought from Fellow Texans Clint and John Murchison for $17.5 million) and a company with the lapel-clutching name of Amicable Life.

Post has also begun to dabble outside insurance with great success. With James Ling, boss of Ling-Temco-Vought, he is building a 31-story skyscraper in Dallas. A Post mutual fund called Life Insurance Stock Fund, with a portfolio of life insurance shares, last year increased its value per share from $5.99 to $13.01, for the best gain of any U.S. mutual fund. (Current value per share: $10.75.)