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Insurance broker Marsh has added five industry veterans – four from competing broker Aon – to its private equity and mergers and acquisitions practice.

James O’Brien, Jason Hawkins and Craig Warnke join Marsh as managing directors, and Jim Beatty and Machua Millett join as senior vice presidents.

O’Brien comes to Marsh after 18 years with Aon, where he most recently led the Private Equity and Transaction Solutions group. He began his insurance career as a management liability underwriter at AIG.

Hawkins joins Marsh from Aon, where he most recently served as a senior advisor in the private equity group. He has more than 20 years of experience advising private equity, hedge fund and Fortune 500 companies on management liability and general partnership liability (GPL) programs. He had also worked at The Hartford and AIG.

Warnke also joins Marsh from Aon, where he most recently served as a transactional advisor in the private equity group. Warnke has seven years of experience in transactional insurance products, including representations and warranties and tax liability insurance, in addition to advising private equity firms and hedge funds on their GPL programs. Warnke has also worked at AIG and a corporate attorney for Willkie Farr & Gallagher.

Beatty most recently served as a client advisor in the private equity group at Aon. He has 10 years of experience in advising private equity and hedge fund clients in their management liability and GPL programs. Prior to joining Aon in 2006, he was a senior underwriter at AIG.

Millett joins Marsh from the law firm of Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge, where he served as coverage and defense counsel for directors and officers, general partners, financial institutions, insurers and corporations in a wide variety of industries. He will serve as a senior advisory specialist and GPL product leader.

O’Brien, Hawkins, Warnke and Beatty will be based in New York while Millett will be based in Boston.

Brown & Brown Inc. announced that Rob Roth has been named director and practice leader of Professional Liability for the company’s wholesale brokerage division. Roth began his career with ECC Insurance Brokers, Inc., which became a subsidiary of Brown & Brown, Inc. in 2005. He was subsequently promoted to the position of profit center leader of ECC Insurance Brokers’ Oakbrook, Illinois office. He will continue to serve in this capacity while assuming the additional responsibilities associated with his new role and he will continue to be based in Oakbrook.

David J. Firstenberg is joining Greenville, South Carolina-based trucking insurer Canal Insurance Co. as president and chief executive officer. Firstenberg succeeds John Pollock, who has served as interim CEO since the retirement of Charles M. Timmons, Jr. in December 2009. Pollock will continue to serve as a director of Canal. Firstenberg has 30 years experience in the insurance industry and has served in executive positions at One Beacon Insurance Group, Zenith National and Chubb.

Before taking the position at Canal, he was president, Specialty Property and Surety, for The Hanover Insurance Group, Inc., in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Direct General Corp., of Nashville, Tenn., has named Carey D. Benson, former AutoOne Insurance chief executive officer, as its new president and CEO. Benson takes over for Dan Tarantin, who will continue to be an investor and serve as an advisor to the board of directors. Benson brings to the position 35 years of experience, including service as CEO of the Home State Insurance Group and president and CEO of Charter Insurance Companies.

Lloyd’s of London has promoted Pat Talley to regional director for Lloyd’s America’s Central Region. He will be responsible for the offices in Illinois and Kentucky, the two states in the U.S. where Lloyd’s is an admitted carrier, along with market development activities in the other central U.S states. Talley, who has headed Lloyd’s Kentucky office since 2006, will remain in that post. Talley said his first priority will be to integrate the Kentucky and Illinois territories; second, will be expanding market development activities throughout the Central Region.”

Topics Agencies Excess Surplus Illinois Lloyd's Kentucky Aon AIG