Jim Sutcliffe said that he would go if things got worse. And they did. The affable chief executive of Old Mutual for the past eight years paid the price yesterday after the insurer's US life unit suffered yet another blow.

In recent weeks, the London-listed South African insurer has identified about $360 million (£205 million) of potential losses against guaranteed annuity products that were sold to Asian investors but were not properly hedged.

Yesterday, it wrote off a further $135 million because of the slump in the value of the preferred shares it held in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the US home mortgage giants effectively nationalised at the weekend.

This follows previous losses on investments in Bear Stearns, the Wall Street bank that was rescued by JPMorgan Chase. In all, about $550 million of capital will be injected into Old Mut's US life business to shore it up. It may even be sold on once all of this blows over.

Mr Sutcliffe makes way for the first non-South African to lead Old Mutual since it was formed in 1845.

Aside from Adam Applegarth, the former chief executive of Northern Rock, not one other boss of a big financial services company has taken responsibility for expensive mistakes exposed by the credit crunch.

Old Mutual's losses are fairly modest set against the writedowns among high street banks, though significant in relation to its size.

Mr Sutcliffe has done the right thing by stepping down.

Others should follow his example.

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