ING Groep NV, the bailed-out Dutch financial services company, named an AIG veteran to lead the U.S. unit that it is preparing to sell via an initial public offering.
Rodney O. Martin Jr., 58, will become CEO of ING Insurance U.S., the Amsterdam-based company said, replacing Rob Leary, 50, who will become president and COO.
Martin is experienced in preparing companies for sales and spinoffs. He was the CEO of the American Life Insurance Co. from March 2009 until it was sold to MetLife last fall. Martin went to MetLife as part of that transaction, but left the firm in late February. He was also made chairman of American International Assurance in April 2009, which AIG sold two-thirds of in an October public offering. He will oversee roughly 8,500 workers in his new role.
In a statement this morning, ING Chairman Jan Hommen said Martin "constitutes an important building block to the preparation of a successful IPO."
Leary, a former corporate attorney, handled marketing for AIG's disgraced Financial Products unit before joining ING in the fall of 2007.
ING is spinning off its insurance operations via stock sales in the U.S. and Europe either late this year or in 2012. The IPOs were a condition for billions of euros in aid that it received from the Dutch government during the financial crisis.
At the end of 2010, the firm had 107,106 workers worldwide, almost 18,000 fewer than it had in the months before the crisis.