Zurich Insurance To Investigate Circumstances Of Suicide
August 30, 2013 by JACK EWING
FRANKFURT —Zurich Insurance said Friday that its board of directors would look into whether undue pressure was put on the company’s chief financial officer before he died in an apparent suicide, an event that led to the resignation of the Zurich chairman, Josef Ackermann, and shook Switzerland’s tidy financial capital.
Top managers of Zurich Insurance sought Friday to reassure skeptical stock analysts that the apparent suicide on Monday of Pierre Wauthier, a 53-year-old father of two, did not signal deeper problems at Switzerland’s third-largest insurer.
“I want to make it crystal clear that there is no link between this news and Zurich’s business and financial results,”Martin Senn, the company’s chief executive, said during a brief conference call with analysts Friday morning.
Despite such assurances, it was obvious from analysts’ questions that the death ofMr. Wauthier has shaken confidence in Zurich Insurance’s financial performance. Mr. Ackermann’s abrupt resignation Thursday was out of character for a veteran banker who has survived many other crises in the past.
There seems little doubt that Zurich Insurance, which has suffered declining profit in recent quarters and high management turnover, was in need of change. The question being asked in Zurich on Friday was whether Mr. Ackermann, a former chief executive o fDeutsche Bank and one of Europe’s most prominent business leaders, pushed Zurich executives too far.
Mr. Senn declined to comment on a report in the Tages-Anzeiger, a Swiss newspaper, thatMr. Wauthier left behind a suicide note complaining of pressure fromMr. Ackermann, who atDeutsche Bank was known for setting high profit targets that critics said could only be achieved by taking undue risk.
Mr. Ackermann acknowledged when he resigned from the part-time supervisory post on Thursday that the family of Mr. Wauthier blamed him for the death, an accusation he said was unfounded.
Tom de Swann, who is acting as chairman after Mr. Ackermann’s resignation, also sought to assure investors that Mr. Wauthier did not take his own life because of some kind of financial irregularity or other problem at the insurer.
“The recent developments have nothing to do with the quality of reporting or the accuracy of reporting,” Mr. de Swann said during the conference call. “There is no link in any respect to that.”
During the call Mr. Senn declined to answer several questions, including one by an analyst suggesting the company waited too long to inform investors of problems in its German unit. The conference call ended abruptly after 20 minutes.