egenene j ratner author of the lancet p106 jan 14 1978 did discover in the maxillary sinus of als patients a previously unknown psthology
fishman bbet elsewhere and a steady stream of als deaths will show that money is like manure to fertilize the living at the expense of the living thst wished to live a bit longer in good condition
Jay S. Fishman, who steered the insurance giant Travelers through the financial crisis of 2008 and into the elite ranks of the companies that make up the Dow Jones industrial average, died on Aug. 19 at his home in New Jersey. He was 63.
His wife, Randy Fishman, said his death was related to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, which was diagnosed in 2014.
Other financial services companies and insurers, like the American International Group, made risky bets on mortgage-backed securities and suffered huge losses during the recession. Mr. Fishman, as chief executive of Travelers, largely eschewed such strategies. By investing its insurance premiums in more stable vehicles, like fixed-income securities, he helped make Travelers, known for its signature red umbrella logo, a high-performing financial company.
In the process, he separated himself from industry peers who were being pilloried as culprits in the crisis. A profile of Mr. Fishman in Forbes magazine in 2011 carried the headline “Wall Street’s Honest Man.”
“Jay would look at mortgage-backed securities and say, ‘You just weren’t being paid enough to take that risk,’” said Alan D. Schnitzer, who succeeded Mr. Fishman as chief executive of Travelers last year.
Once a protégé of Sanford I. Weill, the former chairman and chief executive of Citigroup, Mr. Fishman did not set out to run a Fortune 500 company. A meeting with Jamie Dimon, now the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, set Mr. Fishman on the path to becoming a major force in the insurance industry.
At the time, in the late 1980s, he was working in merchant banking at Shearson Lehman, a financial services firm. Mr. Dimon was an executive at Primerica, a financial services company that owned Fingerhut, a catalog marketing business. Mr. Fishman wanted Shearson Lehman to acquire Fingerhut, and the two men met to negotiate.
Although the Fingerhut deal did not work out, Mr. Dimon recruited Mr. Fishman to join Primerica, which Mr. Weill had recently acquired. When Primerica merged with the Travelers Corporation a few years later, Mr. Fishman became an executive of the newly named Travelers Group.
In 1998, the Travelers Group merged with Citicorp, forming the world’s largest financial services company, Citigroup. The merger was the deal that effectively ended the Glass-Steagall Act, the Depression-era law intended to prevent the creation of financial conglomerates with interests in insurance, securities underwriting and commercial banking.
Citigroup kept Travelers’ property and casualty corporation as a distinct division, and Mr. Fishman became its chief executive.
In 2000, to prepare a line of succession at Citigroup, Mr. Weill named Mr. Fishman and Charles Prince, then the general counsel, co-chief operating officers of the company.
But rather than wait for Mr. Weill to retire — which he thought could take a long time — Mr. Fishman struck out on his own. In 2001, he left to become chief executive of the St. Paul Companies, a Minnesota insurer.
There he replicated some of the strategies he had learned under Mr. Weill — slashing expenses, closing unprofitable business units and looking for acquisitions. In 2002, The New York Times described him as an insomniac and “a demon boss” who would take employees out to dinner after work so they could keep talking business.
At the same time, in New York, Citigroup spun off Travelers’ property and casualty insurance business, although it kept the company’s red umbrella logo.
Mr. Fishman began his road back to Travelers in 2003, when, at a party for New York City Ballet in Manhattan, he bumped into Robert I. Lipp, a former colleague who had become chief executive of the Travelers spinoff. They began to discuss a possible merger of the St. Paul Companies with Travelers.
That came to fruition in 2004, with Mr. Fishman becoming the chief executive of the combined company. It took him several more years to buy the Travelers red umbrella logo, which was introduced in 1870, back from Citigroup.
Mr. Fishman also acquired the 16-foot-tall red steel umbrella sculpture that had stood outside Citigroup’s offices in Manhattan and had it moved to Travelers’ headquarters in Hartford. At 5,300 pounds, the sculpture was so heavy that the ceiling of the underground garage beneath it had to be reinforced.
Jay Steven Fishman was born on Nov. 4, 1952, in New York City and grew up mainly in the Bronx. His father, Edward Fishman, owned a small printing business on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His mother, the former Shirley Cantor, was a secretary for the Army during World War II while her husband trained as an Army radar technician near Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Their parents had emigrated from Eastern Europe.
Edward Fishman worked long hours so he could send Jay to the Barnard School for Boys, a private school that later merged with the Horace Mann School in the Bronx. With an eye toward upward mobility, he also taught Jay to play golf.
In the summer of 1969, when Mr. Fishman was 16, he met Randy Lee Chapman, then 14, at a hotel in the Catskills where both of their families were staying. They married in 1976.
After attending the State University of New York at Albany, Mr. Fishman received a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in accounting from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1974.
Mr. Fishman began his financial career at Coopers & Lybrand, an accounting firm. He later gained experience in mergers and acquisitions at the American Can Company.
He stepped down as chief executive of Travelers last year and was given the title executive chairman.
Besides his wife, he is survived by two sons, Jordan and Scott; a sister, Lynn Sherman; and three grandchildren.
At his death he was chairman of the board of City Ballet.
After Mr. Fishman learned he had A.L.S., he and his wife helped raise $20 million for a coordinated effort at three academic medical centers in the United States to conduct research into the causes and potential treatments of the disease.
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