nsurance veteran Don Kramer?s retirement from ACE Limited a week ago may have surprised some ? not because Mr. Kramer isn?t due some downtime, but because those who know him might find it inconceivable that this driven man would step away from the action.

Sitting down with last week, Mr. Kramer, 67, concedes retirement isn?t something he does well ? this is his third serious attempt.

?It is true, I?m completely unsuccessful at it,? he said, dating his first failed stab at retirement back to 1975 after a life-altering event that left him questioning the direction his life was going ? a heart attack at age 35.

It was a wake-up call that saw him leave his top job on Wall Street as a senior director with leading investment group Oppenheimer to pursue a more autonomous career path of founding his own firm, Kramer Capital Corporation.

Even now he is still clearly not making a total exit from the corporate world with it agreed that he?ll keep his Bermuda and New York offices with ACE as part of a deal that will see him continue advising the insurance giant he has been key to for nearly a decade.

Through a career spanning more than 40 years, Mr. Kramer has been integral to any number of companies both in senior positions and as a director.

Among those, Mr. Kramer was the founder and chairman of the board of NAC Re Corp (a company that was later to be bought up by Bermuda-based XL Capital), founder and head of Tempest Re (later bought by ACE), president of Carteret Federal Savings Bank and chairman and chief financial officer of KCP Holdings and National American Insurance Co. of California, a board member of National Benefit Life Insurance Company of New York City (a Citigroup subsidiary) and was until recently the chairman of Assured Guaranty Corporation, the financial guaranty reinsurer that ACE spun off last year.

Now some 30 years later Mr. Kramer has retired a third time after a second retirement in 1993 was to last only one day.

That was when he stepped down as the head of NAC Re. ?That was the most exciting. I retired on June 8, 1993 and on June 9, 1993 I started Tempest.?

Through the years, Mr. Kramer has earned a reputation for his innovative approach to business.

Two years ago ACE threw a surprise tribute party for Mr. Kramer when he turned 65 ? a bash at which recently retired CEO and current ACE chairman Brian Duperreault praised Mr. Kramer for helping keep ACE innovative.

?As a company we have a number of attributes. We are strong, agile, intelligent, ethical and we are creative...and all of those attributes also describe you, Don ? but none more than creativity.?

He said Mr. Kramer was in charge of ?dreaming? and that his ?unconventional thoughts force you to see the world... He has the ideas and he is a communicator ? not only can he see it, he can explain it.?

By many Mr. Kramer is revered and he counts many of the sector greats as friends and acquaintances.

However, the circles he travels in now ? he?s wined and dined with statesmen and industry figureheads, from the president of China, president of Taiwan (in recent weeks), the premier of Vietnam, to industry greats Bob Clements and Warren Buffett ? is quite distant from his early days.

Hailing from the New York borough of Brooklyn, from an early age Mr. Kramer spent his summers earning his keep with a seven-days-a-week, long hours job as a waiter in New York holiday spot, the Catskills. ?I started working as a waiter when I was 14. When the labour inspector used to come I had to hide in the refrigerator behind the big tubs of sour cream because I didn?t have working papers. I worked every summer until I was 21 and graduated from college. You made good money but you had to work for it,? he said.

It wasn?t all work and no play however, with Mr. Kramer saying some of the great Latin musicians ? including Tito Puente: the King of Latin Music ? performing at the Catskill resorts he worked at.

?I?d stay up until 2 a.m. and then have to work breakfast at 7 a.m.,? he fondly recalled.

After graduating from Brooklyn College in 1958 (he would later earn an MBA from New York University), he set out to make his way on Wall Street.

And made it he did with Mr. Kramer now counting beneficial ownership of shares of ACE worth millions of dollars as part of his financial portfolio. Although Mr. Kramer?s direct ties to ACE were struck within the last decade joining the company in 1996 after its acquisition of the property-catastrophe reinsurer he founded ?Tempest Re ? his ties to Bermuda go back to a reinsurance venture set up in 1974.

And he said he was aware of ACE ?from its first day?. ? I sit on the board of National Benefit Life Insurance (also called Associated Madison), and our chief executive was John Cox who left to come to Bermuda [in 1985 and form ACE. And Walter Scott was another of our executives who succeeded John Cox [at ACE as chief executive.?

Mr. Kramer has had ties to any number of companies through the years ? including being a senior figure at insurance companies from here to California ? but his first involvement, and one he won?t forget, was a Bermuda company he formed during his Wall Street days and named Oppenheimer Re.

?It was an abject failure,? he says of the venture.

Mr. Kramer said the New York-based group Oppenheimer had a ?fabulous reputation? for making investment returns and they decided reinsurance could become a part of that.

?The idea was we would manage it so well that we would get these big returns coupled with underwriting [profit. We gave it to a local underwriting firm who hadn?t a clue and very shortly we realised they didn?t know what they were doing.?

The floundering company was renamed Laguna Re and effectively closed down, although stories of how longwinded the unwinding of an insurance company can be rings true here with aspects of Laguna?s liquidation still being carried out to this day by a Bermuda firm.

?We defined the term naive capacity but that is how I learned the serious side of reinsurance,? Mr. Kramer said.

Tempest Re, the last reinsurer that Mr. Kramer founded and ran, brought him to ACE. After six years Mr. Kramer realised a diversification path for the property-catastrophe reinsurer was the way forward.

?I really couldn?t do it with my platform so we did it in reverse by merging into ACE.? After the acquisition, the company was rebranded ACE Tempest Re and remains today an important contributor to the ACE Group.

When Mr. Kramer looks back to the wave of reinsurers that set up in Bermuda in 1993 ? with Tempest being one of eight companies that incorporated as property-catastrophe reinsurers following a void in capacity after devastating 1992 storm Hurricane Andrew ? he says it really shows how companies can start with basically the same business plan and end up in very different places.

?Bermuda became the perfect laboratory of comparative analysis because eight companies were formed at the same time with identical missions and similar sponsors. Yet with the benefit of ten years of hindsight there were eight different outcomes. Some were very successful, some were less successful and others were really not successful at all.?

He attributes the different outcomes to personalities: ?It all came down to risk appetite and ego,? he said.

?In one case, they raised too much money and couldn?t meet the financial hurdles, in another case they didn?t recruit new management but got old management from London and did a terrible job. In another case they tried to stay a property catastrophe company but the cycle changed??

Mr. Kramer came to ACE through an acquisition, and his history with the company would also be marked by acquisitions.

Mr. Kramer was integral to the company?s greatest period of growth. Under the leadership of chairman and recently retired CEO Brian Duperreault, ACE grew from a relatively small excess liability insurer to a global powerhouse with operations in about 50 countries and 9,000 employees around the world.

?Together we did a total of eight acquisitions and we were very successful,? Mr. Kramer says of working with Mr. Duperreault.

Today ACE leads the pack of Bermuda insurance companies with a staggering current market capitalisation of $12.4 billion ? $2 billion higher than rival Bermuda insurer XL Capital?s market value of $10.4 billion.

It hasn?t always been that way though. ?XL was considered the stronger financial company of the two at one point. Their market capitalisation was $2 billion greater than ours, today ours is $2 billion greater,? Mr. Kramer said.

The 1999 acquisition of global insurer Cigna?s property and casualty business ? a unit that Cigna didn?t put much stock in ? catapulted ACE into a world force.

Although Mr. Kramer says setting up NAC Re for about $26 million in capital and then seeing it be sold for ?north of $1 billion? some years later was a high point in his career, the ultimate highlight would have to be raising $1.127 billion in a 24-hour period for ACE. The company secured that capital injection in 2001, only weeks after the September 11 tragedy, which led to a severe shortage in insurance and reinsurance capacity that left market conditions ripe for growth.

?ACE has distanced the competition with its strategy. It was a question of vision and a question of execution and that is where you have to give Brian [Duperreault all the credit in the world,? Mr. Kramer said.

He also gives Mr. Duperreault, who is now ACE chairman, credit for executing a succession plan that saw him pass on the CEO reins last May to chief operating officer Evan Greenberg.

?Turning the reins over to Evan and a new generation really was the best possible succession plan ever. Brian has a brilliant ability to do the right thing and to do it with style and grace. And he knew to give it to Evan and get out of the way. You don?t second guess. He may sometimes disagree [with Evan but he does not interfere.

?What we need for this generation of ACE is someone to institutionalise it, to oversee the day to day running and Evan is terrific at that. He has limitless energy, and it was perfect timing. And Brian is here if, God forbid, anything ever happens to Evan.?

Mr. Kramer, who was vice-chairman of ACE Limited until retiring from the board last year and assuming the position of executive, the office of the president and CEO, steps down from ACE at a time when the insurance giant, along with many other industry firms, is facing intense regulatory scrutiny.

Since last year, a high profile probe led largely by New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer has seen broker/insurer relationships probed as well as insurers? use and sale of non-traditional reinsurance like finite risk as well as general scrutiny of the sector?s business practices. Some of that scrutiny has focused on Bermuda with probes of relationships with offshore reinsurers.

ACE has been subpoenaed by numerous regulators for information and moved to fire several US-based employees in connection with the probe including one who pleaded guilty to a criminal misdemeanour charge in relation to Mr. Spitzer?s civil suit last October against broker Marsh & McLennan.

In the Marsh matter, former CEO Jeffrey Greenberg was ousted after Mr. Spitzer refused to negotiate a settlement while he was in control. A second high-profile civil suit by Mr. Spitzer and other New York regulators was brought last week against commercial insurance giant AIG after that company?s long-time leader Maurice ?Hank? Greenberg was unseated after a nearly 40-year reign over the group.

ACE CEO Evan Greenberg is the son of Maurice Greenberg and brother of Jeffrey Greenberg.

Mr. Kramer did not speak specifically about ACE?s scrutiny but in general comments about the regulatory climate, Mr. Kramer said both good and bad has come out of it ? and he said it wasn?t the first time businesses have faced this.

?It is not new and it is not different. If you go back to the late 1920s the president of the New York Stock Exchange went to jail and businesses were really [being scrutinised.?

He said the focus then wasn?t specific to the insurance sector because the industry was not anywhere near as developed as it is today, but it was the same scenario as today where the sins of a few gave all a bad name.

?A couple of really bad actors have made CEOs look like they are overpaid, overindulged and that they cheat to win. In many ways it is an unfair characterisation for a variety of reasons, not the least of which that the CEOs who posted steady growth were revered and paid a lot of money. They played the system for consistent growth rather than volatility. Now all of a sudden it is called misstatement.?

And he blamed Wall Street for putting undue pressure on companies to turn out unrealistic results every single reporting period.

?There is such an obsession for earnings per quarter. Earnings don?t start January 1 and end December 31. It is a continuous process and analysts should analyse companies on the basis of long-term performance. We should not create an expectation that corrupts a chief executive into trying to fulfil it. The street says a company should earn a $1.43 [per share and then it posts $1.41 and the share price falls five points. That is outrageous, we should not be creating that pressure. We should be focused on long-term growth and earning power.

?If you look at AIG?s Hank Greenberg you?ll see that he took that company from $11 million to $11 billion [in annual net income. That is staggering. Did he do it on a perfect plane? Maybe not, but Wall Street was looking for a perfect plane and maybe he trimmed here and put it back at other times. But what you can?t escape is that he took the company from $11 million to $11 billion. He created shareholder value consistently and was revered for it.?

When asked if the regulatory scrutiny may have become too heightened, Mr. Kramer said he thought so in some ways.

?Jeff Greenberg is really the most egregious [case because there have been no charges, no allegations, no evidence of wrongdoing. It was [a case of simply the opinion of one person that he wouldn?t deal with the company [Marsh unless he [Jeffrey Greenberg was got rid of. In Hank [Greenberg?s case there are more issues to be resolved and we?ll see how it comes out, but in Jeff?s case I just don?t see anything.?

Mr. Kramer said he also regretted how the regulatory climate was leading to a more risk-averse culture in CEO offices and boardrooms. ?People disagree with me but I feel like we are turning our CEOs into compliance officers instead of creative entrepreneurs. They now have to sign their names to warrant and certify that the financial statements are correct. They should be able to simply hire people who agree that is the case, and having auditors in place to verify. That is how the old system was: ?trust but verify?.?

He said he did agree with the increased disclosure demands now put on companies.

?I never saw a disclosure I didn?t like but I also don?t believe you should create these artificial compliance requirements.

?I think it will resolve itself and some of the changes have been constructive,? he concluded.

Aside from his time in Bermuda Mr. Kramer has always counted the Big Apple and environs as home. He and his Norwegian wife, Elizabeth, are fond enough of Bermuda to, even with Mr. Kramer?s retirement, divide their time between here and their Connecticut home. Indeed, Mr. Kramer says some of the couple?s warmest friendships have been those struck up on the Island ? and that their group of friends here extends much further than the Island?s reinsurance circle. It is also a good place, he says, for their family, which is divided between the US and Europe, to visit. Mr. Kramer has two daughters, two step-sons and five grandchildren.

Only one of Mr. Kramer?s offspring, his youngest daughter Kim, followed him into insurance with six years spent at AIG. She is now a full-time mother living with her husband and two children in Moscow. His eldest daughter, Lauren, lives in the US and married to an insurance broker. Mr. Kramer?s step-sons Christopher and Morton live in Denmark and the US, respectively. In retirement, Mr. Kramer also plans to continue giving back to his adopted Bermuda home with more time to devote to a charitable cause close to his heart. He was appointed chairman of the Bermuda National Dance Foundation last September, an organisation for which he has spearheaded an extensive revamp including a $1.2 million fundraising campaign and the establishment of a world-class international summer dance institute.

He is also a corporate vice-chairman of Washington?s Kennedy Center.

And Mr. Kramer couldn?t be happier that his ties with ACE, even if only in an advisory capacity, will continue.

?I?m really happy about that because I love this place. But I won?t be an employee and I?ll have some time to pursue other things.?

In the end, no one will be really surprised to hear that Mr. Kramer?s retirement doesn?t necessarily mean his slowing down. ?I?m still an action junkie,? he says with a smile.