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No Warren Buffett

“The heart and soul of what insurance companies should be is underwriting companies. I mean, I tell people there’s only one Warren Buffett, and I’m not him.”

—Fred Eppinger, CEO of Worcester, Mass.-based The Hanover Insurance Group, noting that insurance companies are going to have to get accustomed to lower returns on their investments and get better at making money on underwriting. “Insurance companies lose their way when they think they’re investment companies,” he told Insurance Journal.

Take It Or Leave It

“We have been duped into thinking that these ÌìÃÀÍøÕ¾´«Ã½´«Ã½ employees have some kind of secret code that no other employee could discover if they were hired to replace them and therefore they are able to basically hold the company ransom.”

—Cornelius Hurley, director of the Morin Center for Banking and Financial Law at Boston University, saying no ÌìÃÀÍøÕ¾´«Ã½´«Ã½ employee is irreplaceable. Anastasia Kelly, ÌìÃÀÍøÕ¾´«Ã½´«Ã½’s vice chairman for legal, human resources, corporate affairs and corporate communications, resigned Dec. 30, 2009, reportedly because of pay curbs imposed by the Obama Administration’s pay czar.

Kenneth Feinberg, who is charged with monitoring pay levels at companies that received taxpayer funds, imposed pay caps for ÌìÃÀÍøÕ¾´«Ã½´«Ã½’s top executives and set the compensation structures for the 26th through 100th highest-paid employees at four firms, including ÌìÃÀÍøÕ¾´«Ã½´«Ã½, limiting most cash salaries to $500,000. (Reuters)

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