In 1991, following the death of his father, Rolf Gerling took over the company. Trained as an economist, he showed little interest in his legacy and in 2005 Gerling sold his 94% stake in the company to Talanx Group, Germany’s third largest insurance company, for an estimated $1.6 billion. Gerling, a passionate environmentalist who lives in Switzerland, helped establish the Gerling Academy for Risk Research, a think tank set up to study the industrial world’s impact on the environment. In the ’90s, he was instrumental in persuading 50 insurance companies to sign a United Nations pledge to consider the issues of climate change and other environmental problems in their business practices.