NEW YORK, Jan 8 (Reuters) – U.S. life insurer Symetra’s latest attempt to go public shows how difficult the market remains for initial public offerings, even with the cachet of being partly owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc <BRKa.N>.

Symetra first filed for an IPO in 2007, but pulled the deal in October 2008 during the worst of the financial crisis.

This time, the Bellevue, Washington-based company has cut its offering and made other tweaks — such as having Berkshire and White Mountains Insurance Group Ltd <WTM.N> retain full majority ownership.

Buffett’s ownership “will give this IPO credibility,” said Scott Sweet, senior managing partner of research firm IPO Boutique, although he added there was nothing to stop Buffett from selling shares later in a secondary offering.

Buffett agreed to retain his stake in Verisk Analytics Inc’s <VRSK.O> October IPO, which was seen as contributing to that offering’s outstanding performance.

But the fact that Symetra has to show its support from Buffett and White Mountains is telling, analysts said.

“Maybe it shows that the IPO market is not as robust as people thought,” said Alan Rambaldini, an analyst with investment research house Morningstar.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Life insurance company Symetra Financial Corp set the terms of its initial public offering on Wednesday, lowering the overall value of the deal from its October filing and signaling that it is likely to price soon.

The company, which sells group health, retirement and life insurance, and employee benefits, said that the entire offering could net as much as $434.7 million and it expects it’s share of the proceeds to be about $208.3 million.

In October, the company had filed to raise as much as $575 million, but did not provide details of the offering.

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway <BRKa.N>, which owns 26.3 percent of the company, is keeping all of its shares. A fund affiliated with investor J.C. Flowers, which currently owns 2.3 percent of the company, is selling all of its shares.

Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway also kept all of its shares in the insurance company Verisk Analytics Inc’s <VRSK.O> October IPO. The company now trades about 38 percent above its IPO price.

Bellevue, Washington-based Symetra said in a regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission it expects its IPO to consist of 27 million shares for between $12 and $14 each. At the mid-point of that range, it would raise $351 million.

Symetra reported revenue of $1.3 billion in the nine months that ended September 30, up from $1.1 billion in the year-ago period. The company reported net income of $96.2 million, up from $27 million.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Insurance regulators have approved an accounting change to temporarily give insurers the ability to use future tax benefits to boost regulatory capital, despite the protests of consumer groups who say the change could hurt policyholders.

The measure, approved by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) at a quarterly meeting earlier this week, allows life and property-casualty insurers to count billions of dollars of deferred tax assets as regulatory capital through the end of next year.

Life insurers in particular had been clamoring for the change, eager for ways to boost capital after the sector was badly hit by the credit crisis. Regulators approved the measure 11 months after voting against it and other measures that would have provided capital relief.

“Insurance regulators have long understood the need for conservatism in insurer’s financial statements,” said NAIC President Roger Sevigny, in a statement. “This change recognizes that fact, but also recognizes that overconservatism can actually be detrimental to consumers.”

Insurers had already been given several other forms of capital relief, including an adjustment to capital charges for mortgage-backed securities.

Consumer groups such as the Center for Economic Justice and the Consumer Federation of America opposed the measure, saying it allows insurers to count more non-liquid assets as regulatory capital, potentially undermining consumers who bought insurance from these companies.

David Havens, an analyst with Hexagon Securities, said it would have been better if regulators had required companies to find more tangible ways to boost capital. “Simply changing regulations is not a way to strengthen capital for the industry, it is a little bit artificial,” he said.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Prudential Financial Inc’s <PRU.N> sale of its stake in a brokerage joint venture is on schedule to close next month and is expected to give its capital position a “significant lift,” the company said on Thursday.

Vice Chairman Mark Grier, speaking at an annual investor conference, said the final price the company receives in the sale of its minority stake in Wachovia Securities to majority owner Wells Fargo & Co <WFC.N> was still being decided in an appraisal process.

The Newark, New Jersey-based insurer, in a regulatory filing earlier on Thursday, said it assumed proceeds would boost regulatory capital for subsidiary Prudential Insurance by an estimated $2 billion, and add about $4 billion in investable funds. The latter estimate reflects taxes to be paid.

Prudential had already emerged from the credit crisis stronger than some of its smaller peers, and the proceeds from this sale will only help bolster that position, said executives. “We expect to outperform peers meaningfully and consistently,” said Chief Executive John Strangfeld.

Prudential and Wachovia Corp, which has since been acquired by Wells Fargo, combined their retail brokerages in 2003, with Wachovia taking a 62 percent stake in the joint venture and Prudential taking the rest. In selling its stake, Prudential is exercising an option it received when Wachovia bought brokerage A.G. Edwards Inc.

Grier said that if the company was paid in Wells Fargo shares, it would sell the stock relatively quickly. “We do not intend to be long-term holders of Wells, if that is what we get,” he said.

Prudential said previously that it expected the sale to close around January 1, and result in after-tax proceeds of $3.7 billion, and a $1.7 billion after-tax gain. On Thursday, Grier said Wells has its own estimate of the value of the brokerage business, and the appraisal process is designed to reconcile the two.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – MetLife Inc <MET.N> forecast 2010 earnings that could beat average Wall Street expectations, helped by cost cuts, improved investment returns and higher revenue, but said it did not see a return to historical growth levels until at least 2011.

The largest publicly traded U.S. life insurer said it expects full-year 2010 operating earnings to rise by about half to between $3.3 billion and $3.6 billion, or $4.00 to $4.40 a share.

The average Wall Street forecast is $4.11 a share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

MetLife shares rose about 1 percent, or 35 cents, to close at $35.68 on the New York Stock Exchange.

MetLife Chief Executive Robert Henrikson said at an annual investor conference the company sees revenue growing by up to 8 percent in 2010 as it lures customers away from weaker rivals.

“It is about a flight to MetLife,” said Henrikson. “It is a good story.”

Life insurers were particularly susceptible to the upheaval in credit markets in 2008 and early this year, which led to large losses on the sector’s holding of trillions of dollars in investments. But as markets have recovered, MetLife and its next biggest rival, Prudential Financial Inc <PRU.N>, have emerged stronger than some peers, helping each to win more business.

NEW YORK, Dec 4 (Reuters) – American International Group Inc <AIG.N>, the bailed out insurer beset by executive pay restrictions, has parted ways with its head of human resources, leaving open a key vacancy in the midst of fragile pay negotiations with Washington.

AIG confirmed the departure but declined to comment on it further, or to say how quickly someone will be named to replace Andrew Kaslow, who had been chief human resources officer since 2007 and a member of the senior executive committee.

A home number for Kaslow had been disconnected, and he could not otherwise be reached.

The vacancy leaves a hole within AIG’s management ranks not only at a time when it is sparring with the Obama administration’s pay czar Kenneth Feinberg over executive compensation, but as it faces coming up with a pay system to strike a balance between rewarding top performing employees and keeping federal overlords happy.

AIG, the recipient of up to $180 billion in taxpayer aid, angered many Americans earlier this year when it paid million-dollar retention bonuses — payments simply for staying in their jobs — to executives at a financial products unit that was responsible for its financial implosion.

Chief Executive Robert Benmosche, a former CEO at No. 1 U.S. life insurer MetLife <MET.N> who took the job just four months ago, wants to honor bonus contracts already in force, but thereafter wants all new bonuses to be based solely on performance, said one person familiar with developments.

Benmosche already has at least one candidate in mind for the chief human resources position, the person said, adding that it was possible he would recruit a former colleague from MetLife.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – AIG and former chief executive Maurice “Hank” Greenberg have reached an agreement to bury a long-standing, bitter legal battle and the insurer will turn over materials the former boss can use to write his memoir, as well as prized photographs and a Persian carpet.

The settlement is a feather in the cap of AIG Chief Executive Robert Benmosche, as it frees up the company’s resources to deal with the more pressing matter of repaying taxpayers, which gave the company a $180 billion bailout to save it from collapse under soured mortgage bets last year.

Greenberg, who built AIG into the world’s largest insurer over nearly four decades, had been locked in a costly and complicated legal tussle with the company dating back to his unhappy departure from the firm more than four years ago.

Benmosche, in a statement, said the settlement “will remove a significant distraction and expense and allow AIG to better focus its efforts on paying back taxpayers.”

CEO since August, Benmosche first reached out to Greenberg when he was considering taking the job, leading the parties to agree to work together to settle their differences.

“I look forward to assisting AIG in trying to preserve and restore as much value as possible for all of AIG’s stakeholders,” said Greenberg, who now runs several private firms after his ouster from the insurer in 2005, amid an investigation by then New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer.

Separately, AIG said it finalized changes for salary and bonus to be paid to Chief Financial Officer David Herzog, and Kristian Moor, CEO of its global property-casualty unit.

NEW YORK, Nov 19 (Reuters) – An American International Group Inc’s <AIG.N> board meeting is expected next week against the backdrop of Chief Executive Robert Benmosche’s frustration with the U.S. government’s involvement in the insurer’s affairs, a source familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

But the board does not plan to take any action with respect to Benmosche when it meets next Tuesday, the source said.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that the recently installed CEO had threatened to quit earlier in November, partly because he does not have discretion over pay packages for top executives.

But Benmosche said in a letter to employees last week that he was “totally committed” to seeing the company through its difficulties.

Benmosche has been frustrated with the extent of governmental oversight of the bailed out insurer, and would rather focus on improving its operations, the source said.

AIG, which has received up to $180 billion of federal aid, including more than $80 billion in loans, is around 80 percent-owned by U.S. taxpayers.

AIG declined to comment. The source did not want to be identified because the upcoming meeting is not public.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Ambac Financial Group Inc <ABK.N> said on Wednesday that the statutory capital of its main unit was well above a regulatory minimum at the end of the third quarter, easing concerns the company would fall short of funds and risk being taken over by state officials.

Ambac shares soared 44 percent to $1.01 during the regular session on the New York Stock Exchange and were a penny higher in late trading after Standard & Poor’s said it could raise some ratings.

Ambac said statutory capital for Ambac Assurance Corp was $856 million. That is many times more than the minimum capital base of $2 million required of bond insurers by the insurance regulator for Wisconsin, where the company’s bond insurance unit is based.

Regulators can seize a company when capital — a surplus of assets over liabilities — sinks below regulatory minimums.

“Ambac fights on to live another day, another quarter and perhaps beyond,” Hexagon Securities analyst David Havens said after the disclosure.

Ambac said it benefited from several factors, including $311 million from reinsurance payments, and its ability to commute, or cancel, four asset-backed securities derivative contracts that had been worth more than $5 billion, for cash payments of $520 million.

The company also expected to receive $440 million in tax refunds as a result of new legislation. This should give AAC’s regulatory capital a boost in the fourth quarter, said Ambac.

NEW YORK, Nov 18 (Reuters) – Ambac Financial Group Inc <ABK.N> said on Wednesday that the statutory capital of its main unit was well above a regulatory minimum at the end of the third quarter, easing concerns the company would fall short of funds and risk being taken over by state officials.

Ambac shares soared 44 percent to $1.01 during the regular session on the New York Stock Exchange and were a penny higher in late trading after Standard & Poor’s said it could raise some ratings.

Ambac said statutory capital for Ambac Assurance Corp was $856 million. That is many times more than the minimum capital base of $2 million required of bond insurers by the insurance regulator for Wisconsin, where the company’s bond insurance unit is based.

Regulators can seize a company when capital — a surplus of assets over liabilities — sinks below regulatory minimums.

“Ambac fights on to live another day, another quarter and perhaps beyond,” Hexagon Securities analyst David Havens said after the disclosure.

Ambac said it benefited from several factors, including $311 million from reinsurance payments, and its ability to commute, or cancel, four asset-backed securities derivative contracts that had been worth more than $5 billion, for cash payments of $520 million.

The company also expected to receive $440 million in tax refunds as a result of new legislation. This should give AAC’s regulatory capital a boost in the fourth quarter, said Ambac.