Hartford Financial Services Group (HIG) said Chief Executive Ramani Ayer will retire by December, ending his 12-year stint at the top position in the midst of increasing pressure from shareholders.

As the credit crisis intensified through a tumultuous year, Hartford lost $2.7 billion for writing down the value of mortgage-related assets and corporate debt in 2008.

In October, faced with concerns over the company's capital levels, Ayer accepted a $2.5 billion cash investment from German peer Allianz SE (AZ).

Even then, the downward trend in equity markets continued to drag the Connecticut-based firm along with it. All three key credit ratings agencies downgraded Hartford. To meet rising challenges, Ayer cut jobs, slashed the company's dividend by 84% and appealed for funds under the US Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

Last month, Hartford won preliminary approval for $3.4 billion in government bailout along with six other insurers.

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In a move that could shake up the clubby business of exchange-traded funds, bond giant Pacific Investment Management Co. is poised to launch its first ETF early this week.

The move by Pimco, a unit of Allianz SE co-founded by bond guru Bill Gross, marks the first time in years such a high-profile mutual-fund company has tried to muscle its way into the ETF business, long dominated by a handful of large-but-lesser-known asset managers that specialize in indexing, such as Barclays PLC and State Street Corp.

ETFs, baskets of stocks or bonds that trade on an exchange, have been rapidly gaining popularity with investors, and took in tens of billions of dollars in 2008. But many big-name mutual-fund companies have shrugged off ETFs because these offerings were traditionally just index funds with low management fees, which ensured that profit margins were measly.

Pimco’s

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Wal-Mart (

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Allianz Aktiengesell (AZ) has over 75 million customers and a presence in more than 70 countries. It is the largest insurer in Germany with a market share of 18% of the property and casualty insurance in that country and is a leader in Europe. Allianz is also one of the top insurers worldwide. Its clientele includes nearly half of the Fortune 500 companies.The downfall of other large financial institutions could provide Allianz the opportunity to increase market share. The sale of Dresdner Bank will reduce earnings volatility for the group going forward.We are maintaining our Buy recommendation on Allianz after the company's full-year results. The recent sharp drop in share price has taken the stock to a very attractive level. Our target price is $10.00. Read the full analyst report on "AZ"Zacks Investment Research

Allianz Aktiengesell (AZ) has over 60 million customers and a presence in more than 70 countries. It is the largest insurer in Germany with a market share of 18% of the property and casualty insurance in that country, and is a leader in Europe.We are maintaining our Buy recommendation on Allianz after its third quarter results. The recent sharp drop in share price has taken the stock to a very attractive level, and our Zacks quantitative model also has a Buy on the stock. Our target price is $11.00.On our forecast, the stock is trading at 5.3x 2009 EPADR, which is a very attractive valuation. Allianz is one of the oldest and largest insurers in Europe as well as a top insurer worldwide. As such we believe that the company has the reputation and financial strength to withstand any major slow down in the ...

German stock exchange is the second biggest in Europe after London in terms of traded volume or market capitalization. Many of German stocks are listed in US on NYSE or on Pink Sheet. It is a bit difficult to find financial of fundamental data for international stocks. On free webs like Finance Yahoo or Finance Google are not usually supplied or are not frequently updated.br /br /Today I would like to provide you link where you can find a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.boerse-online.de/aktien/analyser/#" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"fundamental screener for German stocks/a. It is in German language but you can always use Google Translate for the a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=amp;hl=enamp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.boerse-online.de%2Faktien%2Fanalyser%2F%23amp;sl=deamp;tl=en" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"translation of the whole page/a.br /br /You can get standard fundamental indicators like P/E, P/BV, P/CF, P/S or dividend yield.br /br /I have listed below current situation for DAX components.br /br /table str="" style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 280pt;" width="372" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"col style="width: 100pt;" ...

Though picking the month of August to discuss European insurance company stocks was perhaps not the most headline-inducing move, we nonetheless were interested in finding out if levels at which some of these companies trade mark good entry points. We spoke with senior analyst Duong Vuong, CFA.

With earnings season winding down, have companies in your coverage performed as expected? Were there many surprises?

There weren’t really any surprises. Much of it was expected as the writedowns of many insurance portfolios for insurance companies I cover.

The slowing economy in the U.S. and now elsewhere has created a drag on many industries. Where specifically has it hit your coverage thus far?

It has hit the insurance industry the hardest, as financial companies in general have felt the brunt of the sub-prime crisis.

What is your near- to mid-term outlook on companies you cover?

Positive on the near- to mid-term outlook. I ...