Going with the cycle's flow

As chief executive officer of Radian Group Inc., a Philadelphia mortgage and bond insurer, Sanford A. Ibrahim (who goes by S.A., as suggested by a Wharton career counselor) has been dealing with a company whose stock has plummeted from $66 in early 2007 to barely $1 last week.

The crumbling housing and credit markets have provided a brutal ride. Still, Ibrahim, who became Radian's CEO three years ago and still has a house near San Francisco, where he last worked, tries to keep some part of his life for himself.

For example, he participated in Radian's first-quarter investor call in May from his native India, so he could spend four days there for his mother's 75th birthday.

He talked June 26 about Radian's prospects and what else matters to him.

Question: Radian has taken relentless pounding by the stock market and by the debt-ratings agencies. Where does the company go from here?

Answer: We're all dealing with something that nobody has seen before in their lifetimes. And that's what makes it difficult to predict exactly when we're coming out of it. . . .

I have to remind myself and I have to remind others around me that however deep this may get, it is, after all, a cycle. . . . On the other side of a down cycle lie your best years, your best opportunities. . . .

Q: The value investors who bought Radian shares in the $10 range thought they were getting a bargain, right?

A: So did I at that time.

Q: Are they still with you? What do you hear from them?

A: Most of those value investors are still with us. We talk to them extensively. . . . The general feeling . . . is, there's a lot of value sitting in our books.

Some of the investors I talk to say, "Anytime there's bad news that comes out on anybody else in the financial guarantee industry, you're gonna get hit. And anytime bad news comes out on anybody in the mortgage insurance business, you get hit." . . .

Q: Socially, what's it like going through this? Do people ask you about it? Or do they shy away from it?

A: . . . I've got a social circle that's within the industry, as to be expected, and a social circle outside the industry.

Within the industry, they're all going through something like this, some more and some less. . . . Outside that group . . . I'm touched by the fact that there's a lot of friends and people I know who reach out to me. . . .

The most interesting social situation I was in was trying to balance work with family things and deciding whether I could go to India for my mother's birthday or not. And you have to find the right balance because you're human beings and you can't allow your life to drift too much to one side.

The other thing was a year ago I made a commitment to the Wharton School to be its speaker at their annual leadership conference.

And I had to do that last week. And I was saying to myself, could there be a worse time to go out and speak on leadership? And so I went out. Stood in front of 400 people. And gave them my thoughts on leadership.

And afterward I sent an e-mail and said, "How did my speech go because I wasn't my usual self because I have so many things weighing on me." And the response back was they loved it. It was an effusive response back. . . . The other thing I have to do is, you know, I have to find . . . little snippets of time here and there to do things that are different. . . .

Q: What do you like to do?

A: I like to spend time with the family. One of the things we did was Osteria had opened up. You know? And I love Italian food. So we went to Osteria and had dinner there.

And then, on the planes and as I find time, I like to write poems. . . . In the time I've been with Radian, I've had time to write only two. I've been so busy. . . . I got into writing these poems right after September 11. . . .

The other thing that I do from a social life point of view is once a month or so I end up spending the weekend in California and going in the backyard and enjoying the raspberries. . . .

At a time like this you can't lose your balance. Sometime this fall there's going to be . . . a new theater inaugurated at International House, which is going to have my name for it, because I made the contribution to get it going. . . .

I endowed a fellowship at Wharton. My intention was to do one every year. But, you know, given the Radian situation, it may have to wait until I can do the next one.

Those scholarships at Wharton are very expensive. But I endowed one last year, which was directed toward a young woman from South Asia - Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, who . . . could go to Wharton and become a role model as a woman leader in that part of the world. . . . A young woman from Bangladesh got the first fellowship. . . . My goal was the next year to do that with Africa and then go around the world and do it at different parts of the world. But I'll have to wait for, hopefully, not that long. . . .

I'm very passionate about certain things. . . . As you see, I'm surrounded by flags and I draw a lot of inspiration about being in Philadelphia.

If you talk about dealing with uncertainty and dealing with a tough situation, you can't think of a tougher situation than where people came in and put their life in peril by signing a document that was a breakthrough. That happened in this city. And they were people who were drawn from everyday walks of life. And they rose to the occasion and did extraordinary things when challenged by that. . . .

I see that happening in very meaningful ways as I look around this company and I look at people who should be debilitated by what's happening around them who rise to the occasion and say, "I can deal with this, and I'm going to put in the weekend and the hours and so on."

We are custodians of dealing with this company. We happened to be on the clock when this crisis hit. And it is our responsibility, whether all of it or part of it or any of it was caused by us, we have to deal with it. And deal with it we will. Deal with it we must. And that's the attitude the rest of the company has. And we will come out of it.