Re: Paying too much for Hartford Insurance?
Noreen Seebacher
4/10/2012 10:09:07 AM
Oh, sorry PC. I did mix up you two.
But that raises an even more interesting question. How are you getting speeding tickets in Texas? The last time I drove from Midland to Seminole, the speed limit was like 90 MPH! Even I had a hard time exceeding that.
Re: Note to Paulson
Dex
4/10/2012 10:04:38 AM
You have to wonder about corporate boards. How a guy from BAC seems like a beat choice to take over a struggling company really leaves me wonder...
Re: Paying too much for Hartford Insurance?
PredictableChaos
4/10/2012 9:59:36 AM
@Noreen
What a great idea! I never thought of shifting the car and the teen to their own, separate policy. With that, I'm sure I'll have some options that will save money. And it doesn't hurt that a stand-alone policy would help show certain teens the real cost of seemingly small mistakes.
BTW, I'm in Texas, not Ohio. Maybe you're thinking of TelecomFreq? Anyway, thanks.
PC
I'm guessing we should put this in the failure category.
At Bank of America, McGee oversaw an effort to boost credit-card lending after the 2006 acquisition of MBNA Corp. That responsibility was removed in 2008, when card oversight was handed to Bruce Hammonds. The bank now has the largest percentage of defaults among big U.S. credit-card lenders.
I knew previous leadership quite well (Ramani Ayer) and he was a believer in cross-selling. Don't know McGee at all, other than that he was a Bank of America guy with no industry background who'd had both successes - and failures - in his previous jobs.
Regarding the merger/breakup controversy, opinions may be mixed, but the Wall Street Journal did a Pulitzer-Prize winning story on how they devastate the workforce. Hartford is getting rid of its brokerage unit. I know brokers. Do you think they are out there now trying to sell Hartford products, or segueing into a new job?
@Scott, I know that's the theory. But we've seen a lot of breakups in the past year, especially among energy companies (ie Marathon) And I'm starting to wonder if the underlying motivation has less to do with value than limiting liability.
Say an oil and gas company has a catastrophic accident. Are they just being prudent to separate their upstream and downstream operations -- to protect the assets in the event of lawsuits?
@Ed, what's your speculation on a possible change of leadership at the company? Are the issues being inflamed by what you describe as the current weakness at the top?
@Ed
I don't know enough about the situation but maybe there is more to it than that? In one of Joel Greenblatt's classic investment books, "You Can Be a Stock Market Genius," he talks about how much value can be added via company breakups and spinoffs. This may be what Paulson is after here.
Do you think there might be any value to a breakup at all? Often when you break up companies into parts that make more logical sense, you structure them for more growth and unlock value.
--Scott
Amen to your post. As I implied, this is just Wall Street's way to make money for itself, and disrupt a 100-year-old company.
I think we all have a little experience in insurance...
icebreaker1975
4/9/2012 11:39:21 PM
just depends on what end we are on...agent or insured
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