Alice Schroeder
Alice Schroeder (born December 14, 1956) is an American executive, financial journalist, and author who was Berkshire Hathaway's leading sell-side insurance analyst at Morgan Stanley and later became Warren Buffett's appointed biographer. Schroeder remains a widely-regarded insurance expert, having most recently served as a Non-Executive Director on the Board of Prudential PLC. In the first week of October 2008, she published The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life, a New York Times bestseller. As a project manager for the US Financial Accounting Standards Board, she oversaw the release of SFAS No. 113, a critical change in US reinsurance accounting regulations. Since 2008, Schroeder has worked as a columnist for Bloomberg News. Early life and education Alice Lynnette Davey is a native of Dallas, Texas. She received a BBA in finance and an MBA from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin in 1978 and 1980. Career Work for the Financial Accounting Foundation From 1980 to 1991, Schroeder worked as a CPA at Ernst and Young, starting in Houston. In 1991 Schroeder became a project manager for the Financial Accounting Standards Board of the Financial Accounting Foundation in Norwalk, Connecticut. Her projects focused on ending abusive insurance industry accounting practices primarily due to the use of finite risk transfer contracts, an issue which later became central to the criminal allegation faced by employees of AIG and Berkshire Hathaway-owned General Re,. Schroeder's work included overseeing the release of: SFAS No. 113: Accounting and Reporting for Reinsurance of Short-Duration and Long-Duration Contracts, EITF Issue 93-6: Accounting for Multiple-Year Retrospectively Rated Contracts (RRC's), and EITF Issue 93-14: Accounting for Multiple-Year Retrospectively Rated Insurance Contracts by Insurance Enterprises and Other Enterprises. When Maurice R. Greenberg was terminated from AIG at the insistence of New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, five employees of General Re and AIG were also indicted in connection with an accounting fraud at AIG that overstated reserves in this and subsequent quarters, the accounting rules violated were those Schroeder oversaw as an FASB project manager. She testified as an expert witness about accounting for finite risk reinsurance at this federal criminal conspiracy trial in Hartford, Connecticut. Warren Buffett was never named in the case. Former AIG CEO Greenberg and CFO Howie Smith disputed in court whether the New York AG had the power to pursue a civil fraud case against them. The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned the convictions of all five Gen Re and AIG employees. In mid-2012 they signed deferred prosecution agreements with the Department of Justice that acknowledged mistakes and misjudgments but not criminal wrongdoing. Insurance analyst In 1993, Schroeder left the FASB to work as a sell-side insurance investment analyst for Dowling Partners in Hartford, a boutique firm run by V.J. Dowling. In 1994, Schroeder moved to CIBC Oppenheimer. In 1998, she joined PaineWebber. In 1998 Schroeder wrote Warren Buffett a letter requesting a meeting for her clients about Berkshire's recent acquisition of the reinsurer General Re,