Royal & SunAlliance in Britain has dumped global CEO Bob Mendelsohn. The news late last week came after weeks of speculation that Mr Mendelsohn was under pressure to perform or be fired.

While most of the things that went wrong for R&SA over the past few years were more to do with what he inherited than what he did, the sacking shows just how much his credibility had become the central issue for the company. He goes home to America with a $2.8 million severance cheque and memories of five mainly miserable years.

R&SA has had a tough time recently, with a flagging share price and falling profits. Three weeks ago Mr Mendelsohn announced an 18% fall in first-half profits and immediately stepped up his international campaign to sell everything that wasn’t part of the core general insurance business. He also cut 1200 jobs.

But the move was too late for Mr Mendelsohn. The company needs to raise up to $2.8 billion in new capital, and shareholders had lost faith in him. “He had to go,” an analyst said. “A capital-raising would fail if he was still around.”

Mr Mendelsohn will be remembered mainly as the CEO who decided to move the company out of life insurance to concentrate on general insurance. Other companies have since followed, but at the time the move was heavily criticised in the financial press.

R&SA Chairman Sir Patrick Gillam said in a statement that “the interests of the group will be best served by a change”. The COO, Bob Gunn, will act as CEO while a permanent replacement is sought.