AIG Loses Reinsurance Executive to Greenberg’s Starr Company

AIG senior reinsurance executive Charles Dangelo has left the insurer to join a company run by its former CEO Maurice “Hank” Greenberg.

Dangelo joins the growing number of executives who have left American International Group Inc. since the insurer was first bailed out by the U.S. government last September.

He has been named chief executive for Starr Indemnity & Liability Co., chief executive of Starr Excess Lines Insurance and director and chairman of Starr Insurance and Reinsurance, all subsidiaries of Starr International Co.

Greenberg said in a statement on the appointment that Dangelo would help Starr International to develop its property/casualty business.

Rates for property-casualty coverage are rising after several years of declines, spelling opportunity for well-capitalized companies in the sector. Insurers’ and reinsurers’ ability to write new business is dictated by how much capital they can afford reserve for future claims.

AIG said it had no comment on Dangelo’s departure.

Greenberg has been ramping up his operations since last year, hiring more staff and entering a joint venture between C.V. Starr and Bermuda insurer Ironshore Inc, called Iron-Starr Excess Agency Ltd. Ironshore has recruited several executives from AIG.

In recent months, other former AIG executives have joined Zurich Financial Services Group, Ace Limited and privately-held Ironshore.

It is not clear exactly how many employees have left AIG in recent months. The company reported having about 116,000 employees at Dec. 31, 2008, the same as a year earlier.

AIG spokesman Peter Tulupman said “voluntary turnover in 2008 was well within historical levels.”

GREENBERG CAMP

Dangelo had been chief reinsurance officer for AIG Global Risk Management since 2005. He replaced Christian Milton who left AIG that same year after a probe into a reinsurance transaction with Berkshire Hathaway’s General Re Corp. that allowed AIG to improperly boost its loss reserves by $500 million in 2000 and 2001.

Milton, who was employed by Greenberg after his departure from AIG in 2005, was in January sentenced to four years in prison for his role in the General Re transaction.

Greenberg has run Starr International and a second insurance and investment company, C.V. Starr, since departing AIG in 2005. He stepped down from the insurer after 38 years as CEO because of a disagreement with AIG’s board over an internal investigation into off balance-sheet transactions, including the General Re deal.

AIG reported a $61.7 billion fourth-quarter net loss last week, the largest quarterly loss in corporate history, and was given access to $30 billion more in federal funding, raising the government’s total commitment to AIG to $180 billion.

The insurer had reported $42.5 billion in losses over the previous four quarters, stemming from large bets a financial products unit took on toxic mortgage assets.

(Reporting by Lilla Zuill; Editing Toni Reinhold)

Topics Reinsurance AIG