American International Group Inc. has tapped Robert Schimek, who had been serving as president and chief executive officer of Europe, Middle East and Africa, to become president and CEO of AIG Property Casualty's Americas region. Schimek succeeds Peter Eastwood who was one of four AIG executives who left the company last week to take a position with Berkshire Hathaway.
Schimek will relocate to New York from London and report to Peter Hancock, president and CEO of AIG Property Casualty. Before becoming head of EMEA, Schimek was chief financial officer of AIG Property Casualty.
Nicholas Walsh, who ran AIG's international property casualty businesses for many years, will become interim president and CEO of EMEA as the company seeks a permanent successor to Schimek. Walsh, an AIG veteran of nearly 40 years, chairman of AIG Europe Ltd., and a resident of the United Kingdom, has been serving as a senior adviser on broker, client, and government relations matters since 2011. He will also report to Hancock.
Alexander Baugh will assume responsibility for AIG's global casualty business, reporting to John Doyle, CEO of global commercial insurance within AIG Property Casualty. As a 29-year veteran of AIG, Baugh has held several senior roles at the company, including most recently as chief risk officer and head of strategy for AIG Property Casualty and before that, served as CEO of Europe.
The other three executives who left to join Berkshire are: David J. Bresnahan, president of Lexington Insurance Co.; David Fields, AIG's global head of casualty insurance; and Sanjay Godhwani, president of AIG property/casualty for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Berkshire spokeswoman, Carrie Sova, did not say in what capacity they would be serving, only that they were joining the company. Earlier this year, Aon plc teamed up with Berkshire Hathaway to launch a new sidecar that will write business where the Lloyd's market participates, the company said. Unlike most sidecars, which write reinsurance business, this sidecar is globally available across all industry segments to write primary business for retail clients, Aon said.
Eastwood, the most senior of the executives to leave, had been a longtime AIG executive and served in various positions in his 22 years at the company. He took over as president and CEO of Lexington, AIG's excess and surplus lines carrier, in 2008 following the defection of Kevin Kelley to Ironshore.
Bresnahan took over as president of Lexington in 2011 when Eastwood was promoted to his most recent position with AIG. Bresnahan joined AIG in 1995 and held various positions with the company's subsidiaries.
The resignations are the latest in a series of executives leaving AIG in recent years. Julio A. Portalatin, who had been AIG's president and CEO of growth economies and senior vice president of American International Group Inc., left in January 2012 to join a Marsh and McLennan Cos. unit.
In April 2009, Allied World Assurance Co. Holdings Ltd. hired three former executives from a unit of AIG. Along with Kelley's move to Ironshore in 2009, a number of other AIG executives followed him to the company.