Mario Greco: Insurance Man Inside Out

There are many top executives who got into their career in unexpected ways. For Mario Greco his whole career has basically been focused in the insurance industry. It is not such a bad industry to be in considering some of the largest companies in the world are in the insurance sector.

Greco comes from Italy having been born in Naples in June 16, 1959. He earned his economics degree at the University of Rome in 1983. Greco had an advantage as far as a varied academic education is concerned. Aside from his European education he went to the U.S. which has a slightly different approach. There he earned a masters degree in International Economics and Monetary Theory at Rochester University, New York in 1986.

The same year he graduated Greco joined McKinsey & Company. At McKinsey he was a Partner Leader in the insurance segment and was with the company from 1986 to 1994. It has pretty been much in the insurance sector from then on. He joined RAS (Allianz Group) (Riunione Adriatica) as Head of Claims Division in 1995. By the following year Greco was promoted to General Manager in charge of Insurance business. He became the Managing Director in 1998.

Greco was already a rising star having been named Insurance CEO of the year in 2004. He became the CEO of EurizonVita, which is a company in the Sanpaolo IMI Group in 2005. He then was appointed CEO of Eurizon Financial Group.

Looking for other opportunities Greco joined Zurich Financial Services in 2007 as Deputy CEO Global Life. By the following year he became CEO and member of the Executive Committee. Greco was named CEO General Insurance at the Zurich Insurance group in 2010.

In what could be described as his biggest promotion to date he became the Group CEO of Assiucarazioni Generali on August 1, 2012. The Italian insurance company Greco now leads is one of the largest in the world. It has presence in 60 countries and has more than 80,000 employees. The company’s assets stand at more than €400 billion.

Greco has worked with various insurance companies and has always been promoted to higher positions. He knows insurance and it’s only fitting he is leading one of the largest in the world.

 

A Solid “Car Guy” At The Helm

There are some executives who excel in marketing yet do not have a thorough understanding of the technical side of a product. For Takanobu Ito he is one executive who has a good understanding of what it takes to make a car while at the same time has had international exposure and understands the all important U.S. market.

Ito was appointed as president and CEO of Honda Motor on June 2009. He has risen through the ranks first joining Honda as an R&D engineer specializing in chassis design in 1978. He was the individual who presided over the original Acura NSX aluminum frame development.  Ito has also held key managerial roles in developing small JMD cars in the early 1990s. He was also executive vice president for Acura from 1998 to 2000 giving him solid U.S work experience.

Ito’s exceptional talent is clearly seen in the positions that he holds. Aside from being president and CEO he is also the president and director of Honda R&D.  Thus he had a direct hand in what goes on at research and development which can be more tuned in to the future direction of the whole company which he is guiding.

Ito has had challenging years especially when the 2011 earthquake hit Japan which affected both supply and sales. He has since gone about redesigning a lackluster Civic and overhauled some of the internal manufacturing systems.  That’s the advantage he brings of being a solid “car guy”.

George S. Barrett: Top Notch Healthcare Executive

You can tell how good an executive is if he performs well in different environments or in other words has worked for different companies. While there’s nothing wrong with climbing up the ranks in only one company, working for different companies means making adjustments especially when dealing with a new set of co-workers.

George S. Barrett is one executive who has move in different companies while at the same time scaling the corporate ladders in the companies he has worked for. At the executive level he was the president of NMC Laboratories before it was taken over by Alpharma in 1990. The takeover did not negatively impact in his career as he served in various positions with Alpharma Inc. including as president of US Pharmaceuticals from 1994 to 1997. He then became president and CEO of Diad Research, a technology start-up based at John Hopkins School of Medicine.

Barrett then joined TEVA Pharmaceuticals and was president and CEO of Teva Pharmaceuticals USA from March 1999 to December 2004. He assumed bigger responsibilities when he became the CEO of Teva North America and corporate executive vice president of Global Pharmaceutical Markets of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, Ltd.

 He’s biggest move came in 2007 when he joined Cardinal Health as vice chairman and CEO of the firm’s Health Supply Chain Services segment. In this position Barrett was responsible for all of Cardinal’s supply chain businesses, which includes pharmaceutical distribution, medical/surgical distribution, nuclear pharmacy services, Presource®surgical kitting services and the Medicine Shoppe international pharmacy franchise operations.  As has been the typical pattern of his career Barrett moved up the latter and eventually became the Chairman and CEO OF Cardinal Health, Inc.

Cardinal Health is a Fortune 500 health care services company which aims to improve the cost-effectiveness of health care. It is huge company by any measure with annual revenues in excess of $100 billion and an employee headcount of 30,000.

Barrett obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1977 from Brown University and an MBA degree from New York University in 1988. He is also an Ellis Island Medals of Honor recipient in 2009.

Larry J. Merlo: The Perfect Fit

In the corporate world you can find many CEOs who are basically on top because of their great management skills. In fact some of them have come from different fields and brought over to run another company. There are also those who are in the industry they were trained for from the very start.

This is the case with Larry J. Merlo.  He is a pharmacist by training and since March 1, 2011 has been the CEO of CVS Care Corporation a company traded in the New York Stock Exchange. The firm is a leading provider of integrated pharmacy health care.

Merlo began his career as a pharmacist at People’s Drug. The company was acquired and became part of CVS/pharmacy.  Having been promoted over the years, he played a major role in the transformation of the firm from CVS/pharmacy, a large regional drug chain, to CVS Caremark, the nation’s largest pharmacy health care provider.  While fostering organic grow Merlo is well-known for integrating major acquisitions. Under his stewardship, CVS accomplished some of the most successful acquisitions in the history of retail pharmacy.

The man who started out as a pharmacist ended up being a great executive as well and as a trained pharmacist he knows his industry inside out.

 

Failures No Obstacle To Success

One should not let failures get in the way of success. Failures are part of life and if anything we should learn valuable lessons from them so we can do better in the future.  Failures should inspire us to try harder. One person had early failures but it did not stop him from eventually heading one of the largest banks in the world.

Jean-Paul Chifflet was born in 1949, in Tourn-sur-Rhône, Adréche, France. He spent his childhood growing up in a farm. Chifflet early on could not be said to be academically gifted.  In fact he failed his Baccalauréat not once, but twice. Fortunately he passed it the third time.  Now this could discourage many people about their prospects in life but not Chifflet. He went on to graduate from the Institut des Haustes Finances de Paris and prior to his banking career played ruby union for FC Tournon-Tain.

He joined Crédit Agricole du Sud-Est Regional Bank as the head of sales promotion in 1973 and moved up the ranks. Chifflet became corporate secretary of Crédit Agricole de la Drôme Regional Bank in 1980 and became corporate secretary of Crédit Agricole du Sud-Est Regional Bank in 1986. He was appointed head of development and credit at Crédit Agricole du Sud-Est Regional Bank in 1990.

Chifflet moved to different units with increasing responsibilities over the years. He finally got the top post in March 2010 when he became Chief Executive Officer of Crédit Agricole S.A.

Many outside of France or Europe may not be aware of the structure of Crédit Agricole S.A. It has subsidiaries specializing in all area of finance, serving the Regional Banks (where it has 25 percent ownerships) and its banking networks in France and abroad. This bank is listed on Euronext Paris.

The Regional Banks of Crédit Agricole are cooperative entities and fully-pledged banks. There are 2,531 Local Banks that form the foundation of Crédit Agricole. These Local Banks in turn own most of the capital of the Regional Banks. The local banks have more than 6.2 million members who appoint 32,227 directors.

Crédit Agricole boasts of being the number one bancassurance in France and being the number two in asset management in Europe. It has 150,000 employees worldwide. The firm has €71 billion shareholder’s equity (group share). 

Chifflet leads this very large organization and his early failures were no obstacles.

Navy Man Turned Business Executive

Lowell McAdam was born in 1954 and earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Cornell University. He went on to earn his MBA degree from the University of San Diego.  McAdam first worked for the government spending six years in the U.S. Navy’s Civil Engineer Corps.  He is also a licensed professional engineer.

He’s future lay with the private sector though. In 1983 McAdam joined Pacific Bell and stayed with the company until 1993. He held a number of executive positions in the company including vice president of Bay Area marketing.  McAdam then joined AirTouch in an executive position and was lead technical partner for cellular ventures in European and Asian countries.

He became the president and CEO of another company, PrimeCo Personal Communications before joining Verizon Wireless when it began in 2000. He built the company into the industry’s leading wireless provider and the largest wireless voice and 3G broadband data network.  For his work he eventually became the president and CEO of Verizon Wireless in 2007 until he became the CEO of Verizon.

McAdam became president and COO in October 2010. He was promoted to CEO on August 2011 and chairman on January 2012.

The former navy man leads a huge company. Verizon deals with customers in more than 150 countries as well as all of the Fortune 500. In the U.S. it has 98 million retail customers and had revenues of almost $116 billion in 2012.

Brian Moynihan: Leading One Of The World’s Largest Banks

Making the most of opportunities that comes in one’s way can lead to rewarding results. This is certainly the case of Brian Moynihan who ended up heading one of the largest banks in the world.

Moynihan he may have had ambitions of running Bank of America but looking at his career it didn’t look that way. Moynihan was an Executive Vice President at FleetBoston Financial Corporation from 1999 to April 2004. In this capacity he was responsible for Brokerage and Wealth Management from 2000 and Regional Financial Services and Investment Management from May 2003.

In 2004 FleetBoston was acquired by Bank of America. If there is one thing about being acquired by another bank is there is job insecurity among the employees of the acquired company. The ones calling the shots are people from the new owners. You just never know if there will be someone else who they think can better run the unit you are handling.

Fortunately the acquisition of FleetBoston only furthered the career of Moynihan. In fact he now worked for a much larger company and was made President of Global Wealth and Investment Management. He held this position from April 2004 to October 2007. Next Moynihan was appointed President of Global Corporate and Investment Banking running the unit from October 2007 to December 2008.

A lawyer by training it came in good use when the bank appointed him General Counsel from December 2008 to January 2009. This was rather a short stint, since he was next appointed President of Global Banking and Global Wealth from January 2008 to August 2009; again another stint of less than one year before being appointed President of Consumer and Small Business Banking from August 2009 to December 2009. This was another short time served in this position and in January 2010 he was elected as President and Chief Executive Officer of Bank of America. Moynihan also became a Director of the company.

In less than six years since joining Bank of America he became the CEO. Quite an amazing feat for someone who made the most of the opportunities presented and came out a winner.

Bank of America operates in more than 40 countries and has 57 million clients in the U.S. with 5,400 retail bank offices.  Its online banking is used by 30 million active users.

Alfredo Saenz Abad: Veteran Spanish Banker

Now in his early 70s Alfredo Saenz Abad has been in the banking scene for around 50 years already. He has seen a lot and has also been very much involved.  He guided Banca Catalana through the 1980s Spanish banking crisis and also prevented the closure of Banesto.

His latest challenge has been working with Banco Santander. He became a board member in 1994 and was appointed vice chairman and CEO in 2002.  When he came in as CEO the bank was heavily suffering from the slowing economies in Latin America. He took a tough stance even stopping to give money to the bank’s Argentine unit.  Alfredo at the same time set out to make Santander one the largest banks in the world.

He was able to achieve this by acquiring other banks.  Santander bought Abbey National in 2004. It also bought the consumer finance arm of RBS in the UK and GE’s consumer finance operation in Europe among its many acquisitions.  Today Santander is the largest bank in the Eurozone by market capitalization and one of the largest in the world.  It still has its struggle given the real estate problem in its home country of Spain.

Alfredo remains undeterred even with a legal problem that could have him spend some time in jail. He still has the reputation of being one of the best bankers in Europe.

John Hammergren: Leading McKesson To New Heights

John Hammergren was born in 1959 in St. Paul, Minnesota.  His early exposure to the healthcare industry was through his father who was a traveling salesman in the healthcare business. John often tagged along on business trips.

He was awarded a scholarship to the Institute of Technology engineering program at the University of Minnesota but later on found his interest in human interaction and business and not technical engineering courses.   John wound up graduating with a business degree in 1981. He would later on complete (through employer sponsorship) an MBA degree at Xavier University in 1987.

John’s career began at American Hospital Supply where he worked for 10 years.  It was acquired by Baxter Health Care and the new environment led him to work briefly for Lyphomed.  John joined Kendall Healthcare Products in 1991. Since the company was in the midst of a leveraged buyout it was in some degree of turmoil. Although John belonged to the last batch of people hired he was undeterred and helped turn the company around.

He then joined McKesson as president of McKesson Health Systems in 1996. This was a newly organized business unit focused on the pharmaceutical supply management needs of healthcare institutions.  He literally built the unit from ground up. With the needed financial support it became a huge success within only two years.

To further strengthen their business McKesson acquired HBOC in a $13.9 billion deal in January 1999. HBOC was the nation’s largest healthcare software vendor. John was appointed executive vice president of the new company and president of McKesson’s supply-management business. As things turned out HBOC’s books were fraudulent.  Earnings were inflated.  This caused share prices of the company to drop sharply. Top executives resigned or were fired.

John ended up being co-CEO of the company. After much hard work they were able to turn things around.  For his work he was eventually elected president and CEO of McKesson in 2001 and Chairman in 2002. Under John’s leadership McKesson has increased its revenue to $123 billion, entered new markets, and became the number 14 company in the Fortune 500 list.  He has contributed a lot to the success of America’s oldest and largest healthcare services company.