Gray Insurance Company, a middle-market property and casualty insurance company with an A.M. Best credit rating of ‘A-'. Mr. Gray became President of The Gray Insurance Company in 1996. At that time, it had capital and surplus of approximately $21 million. Under Mr. Gray's leadership, through organic growth only, this has increased by 5.5X to approximately $110 million in capital and surplus. During the same period, aggregate pre-tax income has exceeded $200 million and average Return on Equity (ROE) has been in excess of 20% per annum, well above the property and casualty Insurance industry average of 12.4% (as per New York University Stern School of Business, January 2015). We believe that the growth in capital and surplus, the strong income performance and ROE are indicative of The Gray Insurance Company's solid foundation, operational strength and strong market position. We believe that this will serve as an important competitive advantage to us, as we currently expect to leverage The Gray Insurance Company's internal resources and expertise to assist in the evaluation and due diligence of potential targets and potentially in post combination value-add activities. In addition to his role at The Gray Insurance Company, Mr. Gray is Chairman of the Board of the Louisiana Insurance Guaranty Association, Director of the American Insurance Association, Director of the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America, Director of the Tulane University Family Business Center Advisory Council and, from 1999 to 2003, served on the board of directors at the Argo Group International (Nasdaq: AGII), a global $1.6 billion market cap property and casualty, specialty insurance, and reinsurance products provider. Mr. Gray was the Chairman of the Board of Family Security, a personal lines/homeowners insurance company, in which The Gray Insurance Company held an ownership interest from 2013 to 2015. This culminated in the sale of the company, which Mr. Gray led, to United Insurance Holding Corporation (Ticker: Nasdaq UIHC). The parent of The Gray Insurance Company, Gray & Company, has acquired or developed several business under Mr. Gray's guidance, including title insurance, oil production and exploration facilities, technology development and real estate.
Mr. Thom Waye, our Chief Executive Officer, has had a broad career in finance and technology spanning 28 years. His roles have encompassed: investment deal sourcing, M&A execution, portfolio management, sales and marketing management, corporate strategy, operations and business development primarily in the asset management, finance, insurance, technology and business services industries. In addition, Mr. Waye is currently the founder and Managing Partner of Sigma Capital Partners, a middle-market private investment firm and the Trustee of The Recanati-Kaplan Foundation. Immediately prior to founding Sigma Capital Partners in 2004, Mr. Waye was a Partner and Managing Director at ComVest Venture Partners, responsible for the fund’s middle-market company investments. Before joining ComVest, he was an executive at American International Group (AIG), where he founded the AIG Risk Exchange and was a member of AIG’s investment organization. The AIG Risk Exchange was formed to create alliances with middle market property and casualty insurance companies for reinsurance, geographic expansion of specific lines and potential acquisitions. As an officer, Mr. Waye was part of AIG's investment and private equity teams which sponsored and managed 12 private equity funds with approximately $6.5 billion of committed capital at the time. It was during his time at AIG that Mr. Waye and Mr. Gray first met and established a close business partnership that would continue over the next 18 years. Mr. Waye has overseen numerous M&A, sales and divestitures transactions, which included identifying buyers or sellers, structuring and negotiating transactions, managing the due diligence process, and overseeing the completion of each deal. Mr. Waye has served on the boards of several public and private companies.
Having worked together for 18 years, Mr. Waye’s transactional experience, coupled with Mr. Gray’s knowledge of the insurance industry, creates a uniquely positioned partnership to both identify, close-on, manage, and grow an acquisition in the insurance sector. In particular, Mr. Gray's leadership credentials, operational experience, and connections in the insurance industry, in combination with Mr. Waye’s public and private company financial, strategic, and operational expertise, together with their array of finance, asset management, and insurance industry connections, will benefit us in our efforts to identify potential targets and work towards closing an acquisition.
We intend to assemble a group of independent directors that will bring us public company governance, executive leadership, operations oversight, private equity investment management and capital markets experience. We will seek to ensure our Board members have extensive experience, including in the insurance segment, having served as directors, CEOs, CFOs or in other executive and advisory capacities for numerous publicly-listed and privately-owned companies. We will seek to ensure our directors have experience with acquisitions, divestitures and corporate strategy and implementation, which we believe will be of significant benefit to us in deal sourcing, evaluation of potential acquisition or merger candidates as well as following the completion of our initial business combination.