Fairfax appoints new president and COO

Andrew Barnard has been appointed president and chief operating officer of Fairfax Insurance Group, effective Apr. 1, 2011.Barnard will oversee all of Fairfax’s insurance and reinsurance operations worldwide and work with the presidents of those operations on strategy and coordination.Barnard is currently president and CEO of OdysseyRe, a reinsurance unit of Fairfax. He started OdysseyRe 15 years ago, with operations only in the United States. Over time, he built it into a large and “highly successful” worldwide reinsurance operation, a Fairfax release says.When Barnard takes on his new role at Fairfax, Brian Young will replace him as president and CEO of OdysseyRe. Barnard will move to the role of vice chairman. Currently, Young serves as OdysseyRe’s chief operating officer. “We are very excited about Fairfax’s long term prospects with Andy Barnard in this new role,” Prem Watsa, Fairfax’s chairman and CEO, said in a release. “While retaining our decentralized structure, we and the entire organization will benefit from Andy’s oversight of our extensive property and casualty operations. Meanwhile, at OdysseyRe, we are totally confident that Brian Young will be a worthy successor to Andy and that OdysseyRe will continue its excellent performance under his leadership.”