A View From The Press Box

If the insurance industry had the equivalent of baseball’s “Comeback Player Of The Year” award, the winner in 2009 would no doubt be Maurice Greenberg. Read the rest of this entry »

The most prolific headline generator by far this year was American International Group, which struggled to regain its credibility and repay its debt to taxpayers after a massive federal bailout while changing CEOs, fending off challenges to its executive compensation, rebranding its property and casualty subsidiaries and burying the hatchet with its former boss. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in January, Brian Duperreault, president and CEO of Marsh & McLennan Companies, said the property and casualty industry was entering its “first ‘invisible’ hard market,” in which prices would begin to rise–but because of shrinking insurable exposures, little positive impact would be seen in top- and bottom line results. That’s not exactly how the year played out, with no sign of price hikes ahead.

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Phil Schreiner, the former editor of Claims magazine, was a gentleman and a scholar, and there aren’t many of us left. My former comrade in arms passed away this month at the age of 66 after a short battle with lung cancer, and the business journalism community he served and the insurance industry he covered are much the worse for his loss.

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