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Managing Director
Aon
New York

On the Power Broker^TM list for the second year, David Bennink faced a challenging environmental risk problem this past year. A site that was once the location of a large industrial manufacturing facility was slated for redevelopment. But environmental liabilities, coupled with a class-action lawsuit filed by neighbors, had stymied its project.

As it is often true in many of these deals, the large company that owned the site was reluctant to sell it for development for fear that in the future it would be haunted by liabilities from the environmental issues. The resolution involved working with an environmental consulting firm that assumed the site's liabilities.

The policy that covered the known hazards allowed remediation to begin, but also covered risks associated with unknown liabilities. The project has started and will eventually be transformed into a housing community.

Bennink also spent a week in Slidell, La., assisting the Katrina relief efforts. He saw firsthand the "staggering destruction balanced by the spirit of people looking to rebuild their lives and homes."

Managing director at Aon for the last six years, Bennink has previously worked for Arthur J. Gallagher and XL Environmental.

Senior Vice President
Marsh
Atlanta

When Elizabeth Bannister talks about solving complex environmental risk problems, she has handled some of the toughest. Marsh, for more than a decade, has worked with a chemical company that emerged from reorganization and managed to find a way to continue to fund the mitigation of a series of legacy risks throughout the world.

"The environmental practice at Marsh is the one thing that will insure that we will stick with them because Betsy's work has been absolutely great," says one risk manager. He points out that, in addition to the environmental expertise that Marsh brings to the client, he requires truly worldwide representation because of exposures in Europe, Australia and the Far East.

"During this past year, she was able to negotiate with us some rather difficult collateral requirements on a line of insurance that few companies would write," the risk manager says.

For an important large real-estate client this year, Bannister was also able to design a worldwide environmental insurance option that insured that the company would be able to continue to expand its investments in Europe.

She's been with Marsh for 13 years after a five-year stint at AIG as an environmental underwriter.

Senior Vice President
National Environmental Practice Leader
Wachovia Insurance Services
Washington, D.C.

From real-estate development companies, to attorneys, to power, utility and tech companies, clients sing the praises of 16-year veteran Glynis Priester. This past year, she handled a series of assignments for an East Coast power company that needed help in the recovery work on the commutation of a group of old general liability policies that involved environmental risks.

Some of the claims were decades old, explains the company's risk manager, adding that Priester put together a procedure, after a careful analysis, that involved bringing on board an expert dispute-resolution firm that made the process work. She also engineered an important environmental liability policy on an acquisition that was critical to making the deal work.

"She's head and shoulders above everybody else," the risk manager says of Priester. The company has expanded its relationship with Wachovia to develop a global environmental program that examines all the firm's assets throughout the world.

With one client, Priester resolved what the firm says was a "major debacle" in a cleanup situation well beyond existing policy limits. A technology company client commends her customer focus and notes she solved environmental claims from a policy placed by another broker.

Principal
Environmental Risk Practice
Integro
San Francisco

There may be no better line of business for Integro than environmental risks. The new broker, formed in 2005, targets the very largest and most complex risks. John Kim came to the firm in 2005 after spending four years as the environmental practice leader for Marsh in San Francisco. Before he joined Marsh, Kim gained important experience as an environmental underwriter for Kemper and XL. Clients say that background helps Kim assemble compelling submissions.

"He placed three huge policies for us last year, and I'm sure it was because of his ability to really understand what the underwriters want," says one client. This brownfield developer reports that Kim's really great at getting back to his clients and keeping them updated on the progress of their accounts.

Environmental risks often appear in the process of a merger or an acquisition, and one risk manager says Kim's advice has been great in these situations. Another client, working with a major homebuilder, developed coverage for the restoration of 13.5 acres of shoreline contaminated by hazardous chemicals. The remediation of the project required insurance along with coverage for future, unknown liabilities.

Integro's environmental operations, another client reports, though currently small are growing, and the firm is adding on some great people, the risk manager says.

Managing Principal and CEO
Environmental Services Group
Aon
Jericho, N.Y.

For Peter Breitstone, 2006 was a year to remember. Breitstone, a 2006 Power Broker^TM winner, had a successful boutique brokerage firm (Breitstone & Co.) that he sold last year to Aon.

As he explained it, within just a few weeks after he talked with a key executive in Aon's construction practice, there was a deal on the table from Aon to buy his company. He was named managing principal and CEO of the environmental practice at Aon Risk Services in New York, and the acquisition became reality in July. The fit with Aon plays to Breitstone's entrepreneurial record.

That acquisition made Aon even more of a powerhouse in the environmental marketplace, and the word on the street is that Aon's revenue from its environmental brokerage zoomed during 2006. Breitstone, an admitted micromanager who says he is trying to reform, maintains a great, ongoing relationship with his clients.

The risk manager at a large telecommunications company credits the Aon team with structuring the environmental coverage for a division that the firm was in the process of spinning off last year, which both made the deal work and will probably save the company millions. Although Breitstone continues to head up Aon's environmental practice, risk managers say that he has assembled the best team of environmental brokers in the business who can handle the most complex environmental risks.

Senior Vice President
Aon
Miami

Essential to the success of an environmental broker is the ability to help clients handle potential huge, unknown environmental liabilities. And often these issues come to the forefront when a company wants to dispose of land, property or an entire operation.

Veronica Benzinger this past year put together an innovative risk-transfer arrangement that made it possible for a large East Coast conglomerate to sell a series of assets, both in the United States and overseas, using a single limit policy rather than having to negotiate a series of one-off deals that would have been costly and time-consuming.

"Veronica and her team at Aon understood the concept of what I wanted to do, and they delivered the goods," says the company's risk manager. Finding a solution to these environmental issues for this company was essential to complete these deals. "They found a way, working with AIG, to cover these unknown environmental risks that not only worked but was cost-effective," he adds.

Benzinger has been in the insurance brokerage business for 20 years and has been part of the environmental group at Aon Risk Services since 1982. During the past year, she also arranged for environmental insurance coverage for a property in bankruptcy proceedings and handled the environmental risk issues in a $600 million acquisition.