A long-time investment banker will be Humana's next CFO, the second recent executive hire from outside the health insurance industry brought in to help with an integration and retail strategy.
Brian Kane, a 41-year-old Goldman Sachs managing director, will assume the role of Humana's chief financial officer and senior vice president in June, after working on some of the largest healthcare M&A deals in recent history.
A Harvard MBA, Kane has spent the past 17 years at Goldman, with a deal flow spanning healthcare, finance, real estate and retail. Most recently, Kane worked as managing director of Goldman's managed care group, which advised Aetna on its $7.3 billion acquisition of Coventry and Amerigroup on its $4.9 billion sale to WellPoint.
Humana president and CEO Bruce Broussard said in a media release that Kane "brings financial and strategic breadth that will nicely complement the operational depth of Steve McCulley," the interim CFO who will reassume the chief accounting officer role, after filling in following the retirement of former CFO Jim Bloem.
For his part, Kane said he thinks "Humana is an innovative company on strong financial footing with a keen sense of the multi-faceted benefits its focus on health has for all of its stakeholders. I was further impressed by the company's long-term growth prospects."
As a managing director at Goldman, Kane lead strategy and financing for client companies in health, property and life insurance, as well as in the restaurant, consumer product and retail industries. At Humana, he has the potential to use that background to be something of a strategic CFO.
The company is trying to make inroads into clinical integration through recently acquired businesses like Concentra, Metropolitan Health Networks, American Eldercare and Healthrageous, a patient engagement technology spun off by Partners HealthCare that's ripe for integration with Humana's Vitality program.
Kane's decision to come to Humana follows the hiring of former Citi investments managing director Christopher Kay as chief innovation officer, who was called upon to "simplify the healthcare experience," as Broussard said.