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By Becky Yerak | Gregory Case, chief executive of Chicago-based insurance brokerage and consulting firm Aon Corp., had total compensation of $10.4 million in 2009, essentially unchanged from 2008.
Most of it came in the form of $5.7 million in stock awards. His salary was unchanged at $1.5 million. The other $3 million came from options, cash incentives and miscellaneous compensation.
From Bloomberg | In an article on Goldman Sachs published April 1 in Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine, Chicago-based structured finance expert Janet Tavakoli accuses Goldman of taking advantage of a flaw in the system of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), or what became known as toxic mortgages. She says Goldman squeezed global insurer AIG for cash by marking down mortgages underlying CDOs that were insured by a credit-default swap from AIG, thus creating a no-lose situation for Goldman’s clients at AIG’s expense. “Goldman is trying to pretend it didn’t know any better, while also trying to say they are great risk managers,” says Tavakoli, the president of Chicago advisory firm Tavakoli Structured Finance. “Goldman cannot have it both ways.”
Get the full story: businessweek.com.
Thomas J. Wilson, chairman and CEO of Allstate Insurance. (Kevin G. Hall/McClatchy Tribune)
Dow Jones Newswires | Allstate Corp. Chief Executive Thomas J. Wilson received total compensation valued at $10.4 million in 2009, up about 30% from a year earlier.
The $10.4 million in total compensation includes a base salary of $1.1 million and $1.7 million in cash payments arising from Allstate’s nonequity incentive compensation plan, the company said Thursday in a Securities and Exchange Commission proxy filing. Wilson made nearly $8 million in 2008 and $10.8 million in 2007, the filing said.
Dow Jones Newswires | A divided U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday
revived a class-action lawsuit in New York alleging that Allstate
Insurance Co. routinely failed to pay interest on overdue insurance
benefits.
The court, in an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia, said the lawsuit
against the company, a unit of Allstate Corp., could proceed in federal
court even though New York’s state-court procedural laws would not have
allowed a class action for such a claim.
Tribune staff report | Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. said it has signed a deal to acquire substantially all of the insurance brokerage business of FirstCity Partnership Ltd. of London, England. The transaction is expected to close in April 2010. Terms were not disclosed.
FirstCity specializes in insurance coverage for the financial services industry as well as coverage lines for professional risk, asset protection, trade and political risks and fine art. Its divisions will trade as part of London-based Arthur J Gallagher
International.
By Julie Wernau |
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC has told Old Republic International Corp.,
based in Chicago and among the nation’s 50 largest publicly held
insurance organizations, that it will no longer act as its accounting
firm after a dispute about the way the company chose to report income it
received, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange
Commission.
Old Republic disclosed that in the two most recent
fiscal years, the two companies have disagreed about how to report
income that came from mortgages that reinsurers backed out on and the
fees they paid Old Republic to leave the deal.
Tribune staff report | Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., the nation’s No. 4 insurance broker, bought retail insurance broker Winn & Co. Insurance Brokers Inc., of Hollister, Calif.
Winn, established in 1910, specializes in insurance programs for the construction, agricultural and food processing industries. Terms weren’t disclosed.
Bloomberg | A unit of Aon Corp., the world’s largest insurance broker, sued its closest rival, accusing Marsh & McLennan Cos. of seeking to steal trade secrets, poach clients and “rob Aon of its key employees.” Aon Risk Services Northeast Inc., whose parent is based in Chicago, filed a complaint today in Manhattan federal court against New York-based Marsh & McLennan and three ex-employees who recently left the firm.
Get the full story: bloomberg.com.
President Barack Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Mar. 8. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
By Bruce Japsen
| The Obama administration’s top health official this afternoon stepped up
scrutiny of rate increases by the parent of Blue Cross and Blue Shield
of Illinois and four other large health plans, urging them to “publicly
justify premium hikes.”
“If insurance companies are going to raise rates, the least they can do
is tell us why,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius
said on a conference call this afternoon with reporters. “I asked CEOs
to post online the actuarial justification for premium hikes so
consumers can see why their premiums are skyrocketing.”
By Bruce Japsen | Consumers in Illinois who lose their jobs and have no other option but to buy their own health insurance will get socked this year with premium increases of up to 60 percent, according to state records.
That group of consumers has been growing, as the recession has created more uninsured Americans looking for ways to protect themselves and their families. Now, Illinois consumers will get a glimpse into just how wide-ranging rate increases among individual health plans can be. The data, obtained by the Tribune, also provide a window into the overall trend of premium increases at large and small employers.
For the state’s more than half-million consumers in individual health plans, base rates will go up from 8.5 percent to more than 60 percent, according to state data. Base rates do not take into consideration health status, gender, age, place of residence and length of a policy — all factors that could raise premiums further.
Get the full story: chicagotribune.com/business
By Becky Yerak | Kemper Insurance Cos., a Long Grove-based
company that since 2003 has been running off its existing policy
obligations, said its Lumbermens Mutual Casualty Co. unit ended 2009
with a surplus of $8.1 million, down from $113.2 million at the end of
2008, according to year-end financial results filed on Monday.
A surplus is what’s left after an insurer’s liabilities are subtracted
from its assets. It’s a financial cushion that protects policyholders
from unexpectedly high claims, according to the Insurance Information
Institute.
Associated Press | British insurer Prudential PLC said Monday it
will buy the Asian unit of American International Group Inc. in a deal
worth $35.5 billion that will allow AIG to pay back some of the money
it owes U.S. taxpayers.
AIG, which was rescued in a $182.5 billion bailout by the U.S.
government in September 2008, will get $25 billion in cash — $20
billion of that from a Prudential rights issue — and $10.5 billion in
new shares and securities for the sale of AIA Group Ltd.
Bloomberg | Europe’s biggest insurer, Allianz SE, is investing money in Chicago’s parking meters. More than $1 billion was spent by Munich-based Allianz, along with Morgan Stanley and partners, on the privatizing firm Chicago Parking Meters LLC, which closed
a 75-year concession agreement to operate the city’s 36,000 parking
meters a year ago.
Allianz spokeswoman Petra Kruell declined to comment
on the size of the company’s holding in Chicago Parking Meters, saying
only that it’s a minority stake.
Get the full story: bloomberg.com
Associated Press | AIG said Friday it lost $8.87 billion in the
fourth quarter as its general insurance business remained weak and it
ran up expenses from paying back government loans.
The troubled insurer also said in an annual regulatory filing that it
may need additional support from the government. However, AIG has
included such warnings in past filings with the Securities and Exchange
Commission.
The fourth-quarter results were an improvement from the $61.7 billion
AIG lost in the year ago period, but they were worse than analysts
expected.
By Bruce Japsen | Some influential state lawmakers are pushing for a delay in a pilot program that would place some elderly and disabled Medicaid patients into HMOs.
The Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services, which runs the state Medicaid program for the poor, has issued a request for proposals by managed-care plans to provide medical care services to 40,000 seniors and adults with disabilities in suburban Cook, DuPage, Kane, Kankakee and Will counties. The Medicaid patients have to enroll in one of two health plans.
