Heidi Miller’s priceless experience

Putting aside her misadventures as a dot-com honcho, Heidi Miller has landed back on the fast track.

On January 15 the former chief financial officer of Citigroup and Priceline.com joined Marsh & McLennan as vice chairman of Marsh, its global risk management and insurance unit. Marsh Mac chairman and CEO Jeff Greenberg reportedly hired Miller as part of a campaign to bring in people with interesting and diverse backgrounds. There’s already been some industry speculation that the 47-year-old Miller is being groomed to eventually succeed her new boss, Marsh CEO Jack Sinnott, who reaches retirement age in four years. Miller and company officials declined to be interviewed.

A year ago Miller was lured away from Citigroup by the apparent freedom and lucre of high tech. But soon Priceline’s stock was in free fall, along with that of most other Internet companies. The organization laid off employees and struggled to turn a profit; Miller beamed down from Priceline in November, amid rumors that the dot-com’s famous spokesman, former Star Trek actor William Shatner, wouldn,t be far behind.

With insurance premiums headed higher, most analysts are predicting a strong run for 130-year-old Marsh, which has just acquired London-based Sedgwick Group and New York insurance broker Johnson & Higgins. Miller may even have a chance to put her tech experience to work. “The insurance business is still a quill-pen business,” says Weston Hicks, an insurance analyst at J.P. Morgan Chase. “There’s a lot of room for process efficiencies. Marsh, with its size and scale, should be leading that.”

Related