Hartford CEO McGee’s Pay Up 58% to $17.7 Million As Stock Surges

By | April 11, 2014

Liam McGee, the chief executive officer of Hartford Financial Services Group Inc., had his compensation increase 58 percent last year as he presided over a stock surge and sold assets to narrow the company’s focus.

His package climbed to $17.7 million in 2013 from $11.2 million a year earlier, the company said in a regulatory filing. That includes a stock award that more than doubled to $8.75 million and a $3.75 million cash incentive.

McGee, 59, sold a U.K. annuity business to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. last year and also completed deals that were announced in late 2012 to divest a life insurer and retirement plan business as he focuses on property-casualty coverage, group benefits and mutual funds. Hartford, based in the Connecticut city of the same name, jumped 61 percent in 2013 after advancing 38 percent a year earlier.

Under McGee, Hartford delivered results “that exceeded financial plan and were significant improvements over the prior year,” the company said in the filing.

McGee, a former executive at Bank of America Corp., took the top post at Hartford in 2009 and the next year repaid the U.S. bailout that the company took before his arrival. The asset sales helped shrink the company’s workforce to about 18,800 employees as of Dec. 31, a decline of 3,700 from a year earlier. He has also been in talks to sell Japan operations to Orix Corp.

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