The board of MetLife Inc. has named Steven Kandarian – the man who picked a good time to sell the Peter Cooper Village/Stuyvesant Town residential development – to succeed C. Robert Henrikson as president and chief executive officer.
Henrikson, who has been chairman, president and CEO of MetLife, New York (NYSE:MET), since 2006, will turn 65, the company's mandatory executive management retirement age, in May 2012.
The MetLife board says Kandarian, who is now the company's chief investment 
officer, will take over as president and CEO May 1. In April, the board will nominate him to for a seat on the board.
Henrikson will stay on as chairman until the end of the year, the board says.
Kandarian has been MetLife's CIO since April 2005. He led efforts to diversify the company's investment portfolio, in part by making the decision to sell the Peter Cooper Village/Stuyvesant Town development for $5.4 billion in 2006, at the market peak.
In 2009, Kandarian assumed responsibility for MetLife's global brand and marketing services department.
In July 2009, MetLife put its institutional operations, its individual operations and its auto and home unit in a single U.S. business as a result of a strategic review started by Kandarian.
In October 2009, Kandarian testified at a House Financial Services Committee hearing on efforts to develop what became components of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
Kandarian was executive director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.
