Nov. 6, 2009 (Business Wire) -- Steve England, executive vice president of Ironshore Insurance Services and overseer of Ironshore’s U.S. field operations, said his first meeting with the company was in a pizza shop, according to this week’s BestWeek U.S./Canada. “We didn’t have any office space, computers, nothing,” England said. Just three years after it was founded, Ironshore Inc., which focuses on specialty commercial insurance, has seen explosive growth in 2009. The company is expected to double its top-line premium this year. It’s entered several new businesses, opened a myriad of offices — now 13 in the United States — and will have doubled its number of employees to 350 by year end.
In BestWeek Europe, the global reinsurance and insurance markets are facing a number of tough issues going into 2010, ranging from pricing and underwriting discipline to capital allocation and Solvency II, according to Victor Peignet, chief executive officer of French reinsurer Scor’s global property/casualty segment.
And also in BestWeek U.S./Canada, in 2000, it made sense to nominate a former Goldman Sachs chief executive officer as the New Jersey Democrats’ candidate for the U.S. Senate; corporate executives were celebrated then. In 2005, the popular senator won a gubernatorial election by a double-digit margin. But in 2009, the one-time master of Wall Street couldn’t win strongly Democratic Gloucester County. But does Jon Corzine’s failure to win a party stronghold affect the future of health care reform in Congress? Aside from health care, insurance issues were not a significant campaign issue. But even though polling showed strong support for Democrats’ health care plans, the issue nonetheless ranked below jobs, the economy and taxes as New Jersey voters’ top concerns in the governor’s race.
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