NYSE: MKL
Headquarters: 4521 Highwoods Parkway, Glen Allen, VA 23060
http://www.markelcorp.com

2009 Gross Written Premiums: $1.91 billion
2009 Annual Sales: $2.07 billion

Key Officers: Alan I. Kirshner, Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer; Anthony F. Markel, Vice Chairman; Steven A. Markel, Vice Chairman.

In the 1920s, company founder Samuel A. Markel ran a small insurance agency in Norfolk, Virginia. When the city of passed a law requiring that all jitney buses (old cars converted into small buses for public transportation) be insured. Unable to find backing from any large insurance firms because the risk was too high, Markel organized a mutual insurance company composed of the jitney bus owners, called the Mutual Casualty Association.

Samuel incorporated his two sets of twin sons into the business, and family members remain involved as company executives.

Today, Markel Corporation caters to unique, nonstandard and hard-to-place risks in three sections of specialty insurance: Excess and Surplus Lines, Specialty Admitted and the London Insurance Market.

Sources: markelcorp.com, Hoover’s, Google Finance

Compiled by Life Quotes, Inc. staff