Besides undermining investor faith in the markets, management experts said, executives risk their own reputations when they seem to emerge from bad times better than their employees and investors.
"Just a few years ago, digital information meant one thing to senior executives: risk," said Susan McPartlin, retail and consumer industry leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers, which joined with the Grocery Manufacturers Association on Tuesday to release a study titled, "Thriving in a Connected World".
Return to fundamental research, a practice that executives, risk managers, and individual investors should follow to better understand the macro and micro causative factors likely to affect a company's performance.
The conservative daily Le Figaro published the lead headline, "Executive Life: The Infernal Scenario," and warned that French executives risked jail sentences and the French taxpayer the payment of billions of dollars in penalties in the event of a trial.
Indeed, the entire "Lord of the Rings" project was a major gamble for New Line, a mini-studio within the AOL Time Warner empire, whose executives risked $300 million on the three-movie series.
He said executives risked being regarded as aliens in a different galaxy from the rest of the community, because of the ever-widening gap between top pay and the rest.
The step would be "a helpful deterrent" against senior executives risking giant losses at banks that would result in a government bailout and cost the taxpayer billions of dollars, officials say.
(Mr. Sills's first insurance-industry start-up, Executive Risk, was also known for its innovative strategy and practices. The company, which opened in 1987, was acquired in 1999 by the Chubb Corporation in a deal valued at more than $1 billion).
The Chubb Group reported a 10.5percentt rise in operating income, to $180.7 million, but its per-share earnings remained flat at $1, reflecting an issue of stock for the recent purchase of Executive Risk, a company specializing in liability coverage for company executives and board members.
Now, with NTL groaning under $17.3 billion in debt, Mr. Knapp, the chief executive, risks losing control of the company he built.
The bride, who works in Memphis, is the chief operating officer in the executive risks division of the Willis Group, a London insurance brokerage company.
