MetLife
Age: 47
Year named CFO: 2003
2008 Earnings: $2.7 billion
Number of Employees: 56,000
Compensation: $3,327,414
Stock Options: $774,898
WHEELER: “If you are not careful, you can let a crisis run your life. But we still have a business to run, and business is actually pretty good.”
ONE VOTER: “I believe he has a very strong handle on the financials and does an excellent job communicating them. He was also smart enough to raise capital before they really needed to.”
MetLife CFO William Wheeler is spending a lot more time on the road these days. Market jitters about the insurance industry have required him to devote more time to communicating with board members, sellers of MetLife products and investors. “I’ve done videotapes, gotten on the phone with sales forces, done conference calls, spoken at conferences and given presentations to our internal employees,” he says.
The message he stresses in all of his outreach is one of financial strength. MetLife moved aggressively last fall to raise capital, selling $2.3 billion of common stock despite a sharp decline in its share price in the panic that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings. “Our stock had moved down in price, but we made the decision that things could get worse,” Wheeler explains. “At the time we were frustrated about the price we got, but over the last four to five months, having that extra capital has positioned us as the strongest company in the industry,” he contends.
Wheeler doesn’t expect the economy to turn around before the end of this year, and he believes the recovery is likely to be tepid in 2010, but he’s determined to see that MetLife will weather the slump.
Click on the names below to view their individual profiles.
a href="http://institutionalinvestor.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=2197618" target="_blank">Arne Sorenson, Marriott International
Louis Baldwin, XTO Energy
Kevin March, Texas Instruments
To read the main article, click on America’s Best CFOs Get Tough in Crisis
Click here to view the complete rankings of America’s Best CFOs
