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New Hartford CFO Is Latest to Flee from AIG

This story is republished from CFOZone, where you’ll find news, analysis and professional networking tools for finance executives.

Perhaps he wasn’t crazy about the new forced ranking method on pay?

The Hartford Financial Services Group announced late on Tuesday that Christopher Swift will join the insurer as chief financial officer effective March 1.

Swift, 49, is jumping ship from American Life Insurance Company (ALICO) where he was CFO. ALICO is a subsidiary of American International Group, which the bailed-out insurer is trying to sell to MetLife for $15 billion. The deal is currently hung up on a tax issue.

Hartford, which received $3.4 billion in government aid, has been undergoing a major executive shakeup.


Liam McGee, a former head of consumer banking at Bank of America, took over as chief executive in October from Ramani Ayer, who had led Hartford’s aggressive push into variable annuities and retired at the end of 2009.

Shortly after taking over, McGee tapped Hartford’s current CFO, Lizabeth Zlatkus, for its chief risk officer position. She’ll move into that role when Swift officially joins the company.

AIG, for its part, has been bleeding talent. More than 60 managers have left the company since it was bailed out in September 2008, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Pay practices at AIG have been under intense scrutiny by the public, as well as the government.

Swift began his career as an auditor in the Chicago office of KPMG where he focused on financial services. He was made partner at 32. He then became executive vice president of Conning Asset Management, a subsidiary of General American, where he was responsible for finance, sales/marketing and information technology. After MetLife acquired Conning in 1999, Swift returned to KPMG and was eventually appointed head of the firm’s Global Insurance Industry Practice. As leader of this segment, he worked with clients in both the life and P&C segments, globally and domestically. He was responsible for matters ranging from strategic and regulatory to audit, risk, advisory and tax services.

Goldman Sachs CFO Admits That the Company Is Sensitive to Trash Talk, Doesn’t Go Looking for Trouble

Reuters reports that David Viniar told an investor conference in California that God’s Shop “take[s] all of the criticisms quite seriously” and “We never at least intentionally take reputational risk.”

Personally, I’m not sure why Vin is trippin’, since it’s pretty clear that most people don’t think Goldman is going the way of the dodo Andersen. [Reuters]

Some People Aren’t Too Concerned About the Walgreen CFO’s Second DUI

Yesterday we shared with you the unfortunate tale of Walgreen CFO Wade Miquelon picking up his second DUI in just over a year. While Mr. Miquelon is obviously responsible for his own actions, this whole mess could have been avoided if WAG would just splurge a tad and get him 24/7 car service. Sure you might catch some shit from Footnoted but isn’t that better than people getting hurt?

Anyhoo, most of the coverage on this story is in and around Chicago but naturally, analysts that cover the company were asked about the whole ordeal and frankly, since jumping behind the wheel after a few highballs doesn’t seem to have any effect on Wade’s professional capacity, it’s really NBD:

Dereck Leckow with Barrington Research […] sees no reason for investors to be concerned.

“Certainly, it’s rather embarrassing, but he’s not been found guilty of anything at this point,” said Leckow.

“At this point in time, it’s not something to be concerned about,” he concluded. Leckow has an “Outperform” rating on Walgreen shares and a $46 price target.

The risk for investors, if anything serious were to result from the latest charge, is that Miquelon is regarded as key to restructuring that’s been going on at Walgreen.

“Wade has been very valuable for the company’s cost-reduction efforts,” observes Scott Mushkin of Jefferies & Co. “If there were any problem that would take him away from his responsibilities at Walgreen, that would be a negative,” said Mushkin.

As we noted yesterday, WAG isn’t commenting on this “personal matter” but some people are wondering aloud about Wade’s decision-making ability:

Companies have to disclose “events that occurred during the past 10 years and that are material to an evaluation of the ability or integrity” of an officer. This includes whether the person “was convicted in a criminal proceeding … (excluding traffic violations and other minor offenses),” according to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

So the question becomes when does such an issue stops being a “personal matter” and starts becoming a “material” one. And what does it say about a person who makes such repeated mistakes, risking himself and others in the process? Can shareholders trust him with running the finances of their company?

The answer is, it depends.

“Some companies might have disclosed the second arrest right away; some might have said something somewhere,” said Edward Best, a partner at law firm Mayer Brown. “Other companies could reasonably have concluded, ‘Hey, the guy still showed up Monday morning.’ He’s still able to fly to New York to meet with rating agencies, investors and bankers. It’s not a material issue.”

One thing is for certain – Miquelon is losing his license for three years effective November 10th, so Walgreen has a couple of weeks to arrange for that car service.

Walgreen: Street Unperturbed By CFO DUI Arrest [Barron’s]
Walgreen CFO Arrested on Drunk Driving Charges … Again [Daily Finance]
Walgreens CFO charged for 2nd time with DUI [Chicago Breaking Business]