10-K 1 d10k.htm FORM 10-K Form 10-K
Table of Contents

UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549


FORM 10-K

(MARK ONE)

x ANNUAL REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934

FOR THE FISCAL YEAR ENDED DECEMBER 31, 2005

OR

¨   TRANSITION REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934

FOR THE TRANSITION PERIOD FROM              TO             

COMMISSION FILE NUMBER 001-16707


Prudential Financial, Inc.

(Exact Name of Registrant as Specified in its Charter)

New Jersey

(State or Other Jurisdiction

of Incorporation or Organization)

 

22-3703799

(I.R.S. Employer

Identification Number)

751 Broad Street

Newark, New Jersey 07102

(973) 802-6000

(Address and Telephone Number of Registrant’s Principal Executive Offices)

SECURITIES REGISTERED PURSUANT TO SECTION 12(b) OF THE ACT:

Title of Each Class


 

Name of Each Exchange on Which Registered


Common Stock, Par Value $.01

(including Shareholder Protection Rights)

  New York Stock Exchange

SECURITIES REGISTERED PURSUANT TO SECTION 12(g) OF THE ACT: NONE

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act. Yes x No ¨

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or Section 15(d) of the Act. Yes ¨ No x

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days. Yes x No ¨

Indicate by check mark if disclosure of delinquent filers pursuant to Item 405 of Regulation S-K is not contained herein, and will not be contained, to the best of registrant’s knowledge, in definitive proxy or information statements incorporated by reference in Part III of this Form 10-K or any amendment to this Form 10-K. x

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, or a non-accelerated filer. See definition of “accelerated filer and large accelerated filer” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act. (Check one):

Large accelerated filer x

   Accelerated filer ¨    Non-accelerated filer ¨

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Act). Yes ¨ No x

As of June 30, 2005, the aggregate market value of the registrant’s Common Stock (par value $0.01) held by non-affiliates of the registrant was $33.71 billion and 513 million shares of the Common Stock were outstanding. As of January 31, 2006, 495 million shares of the registrant’s Common Stock (par value $0.01) were outstanding. As of June 30, 2005, and January 31, 2006, 2 million shares of the registrant’s Class B Stock, for which there is no established public trading market, were outstanding and held by non-affiliates of the registrant.

DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE

THE INFORMATION REQUIRED TO BE FURNISHED PURSUANT TO PART III OF THIS FORM 10-K IS SET FORTH IN, AND IS HEREBY INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE HEREIN FROM, THE REGISTRANT’S DEFINITIVE PROXY STATEMENT FOR THE ANNUAL MEETING OF SHAREHOLDERS TO BE HELD ON MAY 9, 2006, TO BE FILED WITH BY THE REGISTRANT WITH THE SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION PURSUANT TO REGULATION 14A NOT LATER THAN 120 DAYS AFTER THE YEAR ENDED DECEMBER 31, 2005.



Table of Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS

               Page
Number


PART I

  

Item 1.

   Business    1
    

Item 1A.

   Risk Factors    35
    

Item 1B.

   Unresolved Staff Comments    43
    

Item 1C.

   Executive Officers of the Registrant    43
    

Item 2.

   Properties    45
    

Item 3.

   Legal Proceedings    45
    

Item 4.

   Submission of Matters to a Vote of Security Holders    50

PART II

  

Item 5.

   Market for Registrant’s Common Equity, Related Stockholder Matters and Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities   

50

    

Item 6.

   Selected Financial Data    55
    

Item 7.

   Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations   

57

    

Item 7A.

   Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk    136
    

Item 8.

   Financial Statements and Supplementary Data    141
    

Item 9.

   Changes in and Disagreements with Accountants on Accounting and Financial Disclosure   

243

    

Item 9A.

   Controls and Procedures    243
    

Item 9B.

   Other Information    243

PART III

  

Item 10.

   Directors and Executive Officers of the Registrant    243
    

Item 11.

   Executive Compensation    244
    

Item 12.

   Security Ownership of Certain Beneficial Owners and Management and Related Stockholder Matters   

244

    

Item 13.

   Certain Relationships and Related Transactions    245
    

Item 14.

   Principal Accounting Fees and Services    245

PART IV

  

Item 15.

   Exhibits, Financial Statement Schedules    245

SIGNATURES

   260

Forward-Looking Statements

    

Some of the statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, including but not limited to those in Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations, may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as “expects,” “believes,” “anticipates,” “includes,” “plans,” “assumes,” “estimates,” “projects,” “intends,” “should,” “will,” “shall” or variations of such words are generally part of forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are made based on management’s current expectations and beliefs concerning future developments and their potential effects upon Prudential Financial, Inc. and its subsidiaries. There can be no assurance that future developments affecting Prudential Financial, Inc. and its subsidiaries will be those anticipated by management. These forward-looking statements are not a guarantee of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, and there are certain important factors that could cause actual results to differ, possibly materially, from expectations or estimates reflected in such forward-looking statements, including, among others: (1) general economic, market and political conditions, including the performance and fluctuations of stock, real estate and other financial markets; (2) interest rate fluctuations; (3) reestimates of our reserves for future policy benefits and claims; (4) differences between actual experience regarding mortality, morbidity, persistency, surrender experience, interest rates or market returns and the assumptions we use in pricing our products, establishing liabilities and reserves or for other purposes; (5) changes in our assumptions related to deferred policy acquisition costs, valuation of business acquired or goodwill; (6) changes in our claims-paying or credit ratings; (7) investment losses and defaults; (8) competition in our product lines and for personnel; (9) changes in tax law; (10) economic, political, currency and other risks relating to our international operations; (11) fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates and foreign securities markets; (12) regulatory or legislative changes; (13) adverse determinations in litigation or regulatory matters and our exposure to contingent liabilities, including in connection with our divestiture or winding down of businesses; (14) domestic or international military actions, natural or man-made disasters including terrorist activities or pandemic disease, or other events resulting in catastrophic loss of life; (15) ineffectiveness of risk management policies and procedures in identifying, monitoring and managing risks; (16) effects of acquisitions, divestitures and restructurings, including possible difficulties in integrating and realizing the projected results of acquisitions; (17) changes in statutory or U.S. GAAP accounting principles, practices or policies; (18) changes in assumptions for retirement expense; (19) Prudential Financial, Inc.’s primary reliance, as a holding company, on dividends or distributions from its subsidiaries to meet debt payment obligations and continue share repurchases, and the applicable regulatory restrictions on the ability of the subsidiaries to pay such dividends or distributions; and (20) risks due to the lack of legal separation between our Financial Services Businesses and our Closed Block Business. Prudential Financial, Inc. does not intend, and is under no obligation, to update any particular forward-looking statement included in this document. See “Risk Factors” for discussion of certain risks relating to our businesses and investment in our securities.

 

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Throughout this Annual Report on Form 10-K, “Prudential Financial” and the “Registrant” refer to Prudential Financial, Inc., the ultimate holding company for all of our companies. “Prudential Insurance” refers to The Prudential Insurance Company of America, before and after its demutualization on December 18, 2001. “Prudential,” the “Company,” “we” and “our” refer to our consolidated operations before and after demutualization.

 

PART I

 

ITEM 1.    BUSINESS

 

Overview

 

Prudential Financial, Inc. is one of the largest financial services companies in the United States. Through our subsidiaries and affiliates, we offer a wide array of financial products and services, including life insurance, mutual funds, annuities, pension and retirement-related services and administration, asset management, banking and trust services, real estate brokerage and relocation services, and, through a joint venture, retail securities brokerage services. We provide these products and services to individual and institutional customers in the U.S. and approximately 30 other countries through one of the largest distribution networks in the financial services industry. Our principal executive offices are located in Newark, New Jersey.

 

The businesses of Prudential Financial are separated into the Financial Services Businesses and the Closed Block Business. The Financial Services Businesses is comprised of our Insurance, Investment and International Insurance and Investments divisions and our Corporate and Other operations. The Closed Block Business comprises the assets and related liabilities of the Closed Block described below and certain related assets and liabilities.

 

Prudential Financial has two classes of common stock outstanding. The Common Stock, which is publicly traded (NYSE:PRU), reflects the performance of the Financial Services Businesses, while the Class B Stock, which was issued through a private placement and does not trade on any exchange, reflects the performance of the Closed Block Business.

 

Demutualization and Separation of the Businesses

 

Demutualization

 

On December 18, 2001, our date of demutualization, Prudential Insurance converted from a mutual life insurance company owned by its policyholders to a stock life insurance company and became an indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of Prudential Financial. The demutualization was carried out under Prudential Insurance’s Plan of Reorganization, dated as of December 15, 2000, as amended, which we refer to as the Plan of Reorganization. On the date of demutualization, eligible policyholders, as defined in the Plan of Reorganization, received shares of Prudential Financial’s Common Stock or the right to receive cash or policy credits, which are increases in policy values or increases in other policy benefits, upon the extinguishment of all membership interests in Prudential Insurance.

 

On the date of demutualization, Prudential Financial completed an initial public offering of its Common Stock, as well as the sale of shares of Class B Stock, a separate class of common stock, through a private placement. In addition, on the date of demutualization, Prudential Holdings, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Prudential Financial that owns the capital stock of Prudential Insurance, issued $1.75 billion in senior secured notes, which we refer to as the IHC debt. A portion of the IHC debt was insured by a bond insurer. Concurrent with the demutualization, various subsidiaries of Prudential Insurance were reorganized, becoming direct or indirect subsidiaries of Prudential Financial.

 

The Plan of Reorganization required us to establish and operate a regulatory mechanism known as the Closed Block. The Closed Block is designed generally to provide for the reasonable expectations of holders of participating individual life insurance policies and annuities included in the Closed Block for future policy

 

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dividends after demutualization by allocating assets that will be used for payment of benefits, including policyholder dividends, on these policies. See Note 9 to the Consolidated Financial Statements for more information on the Closed Block. The Plan of Reorganization provided that Prudential Insurance may, with the prior consent of the New Jersey Commissioner of Banking and Insurance, enter into agreements to transfer to a third party all or any part of the risks under the Closed Block policies. We have completed the process of arranging reinsurance of the Closed Block. As of December 31, 2005, 90% of the Closed Block had been reinsured, including 17% by a wholly owned subsidiary of Prudential Financial.

 

Separation of the Businesses

 

The businesses of Prudential Financial are separated into the Financial Services Businesses and the Closed Block Business for financial statement purposes. For a discussion of the operating results of the Financial Services Businesses and the Closed Block Business, see “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.” The Financial Services Businesses comprises our Insurance division, Investment division, and International Insurance and Investments division as well as our Corporate and Other operations. See “—Financial Services Businesses” below for a more detailed discussion of the divisions comprising the Financial Services Businesses. The Closed Block Business comprises the assets and related liabilities of the Closed Block and certain other assets and liabilities, including the IHC debt. See “—Closed Block Business” below for a more detailed discussion of the Closed Block Business. We refer to the Financial Services Businesses and the Closed Block Business collectively as the Businesses.

 

The following diagram reflects the allocation of Prudential Financial’s consolidated assets and liabilities between the Financial Services Businesses and the Closed Block Business:

 

LOGO

 

There is no legal separation of the two Businesses. The foregoing allocation of assets and liabilities does not require Prudential Financial, Prudential Insurance, any of their subsidiaries or the Closed Block to transfer any specific assets or liabilities to a new legal entity. Financial results of the Closed Block Business, including debt service on the IHC debt, will affect Prudential Financial’s consolidated results of operations, financial position and borrowing costs. In addition, any net losses of the Closed Block Business, and any dividends or distributions on, or repurchases of, the Class B Stock, will reduce the assets of Prudential Financial legally available for dividends on the Common Stock. Accordingly, you should read the financial information for the Financial Services Businesses together with the consolidated financial information of Prudential Financial.

 

The Common Stock reflects the performance of the Financial Services Businesses and the Class B Stock reflects the performance of the Closed Block Business. However, the market value of the Common Stock may not reflect solely the performance of the Financial Services Businesses.

 

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In order to separately reflect the financial performance of the Financial Services Businesses and the Closed Block Business since the date of demutualization, we have allocated all our assets and liabilities and earnings between the two Businesses, and we account for them as if they were separate legal entities. All assets and liabilities of Prudential Financial and its subsidiaries not included in the Closed Block Business constitute the assets and liabilities of the Financial Services Businesses. Assets and liabilities allocated to the Closed Block Business are those that we consider appropriate to operate that Business. The Closed Block Business consists principally of:

 

    within Prudential Insurance, the Closed Block Assets, Surplus and Related Assets (see below), deferred policy acquisition costs and other assets in respect of the policies included in the Closed Block and, with respect to liabilities, the Closed Block Liabilities;

 

    within Prudential Holdings, LLC, the principal amount of the IHC debt, related unamortized debt issuance costs and hedging activities, and a guaranteed investment contract; and

 

    within Prudential Financial, dividends received from Prudential Holdings, LLC, and reinvestment proceeds thereof, and other liabilities of Prudential Financial, in each case attributable to the Closed Block Business.

 

The Closed Block Assets consist of (1) those assets initially allocated to the Closed Block including fixed maturities, equity securities, commercial loans and other long- and short-term investments, (2) cash flows from such assets, (3) assets resulting from the reinvestment of such cash flows, (4) cash flows from the Closed Block Policies, and (5) assets resulting from the investment of cash flows from the Closed Block Policies. The Closed Block Assets include policy loans, accrued interest on any of the foregoing assets and premiums due on the Closed Block Policies. The Closed Block Assets do not include assets relating to a closed block established for Canadian policies because the related amounts are insignificant. The Closed Block Liabilities are Closed Block Policies and other liabilities of the Closed Block associated with the Closed Block Assets. The Closed Block Assets and Closed Block Liabilities are supported by additional assets held outside the Closed Block by Prudential Insurance to provide additional capital with respect to the Closed Block Policies, as well as invested assets held outside the Closed Block that represent the difference between the Closed Block Assets and the sum of the Closed Block Liabilities and the interest maintenance reserve. We refer to these additional assets and invested assets outside the Closed Block collectively as the Surplus and Related Assets. The interest maintenance reserve, recorded only under statutory accounting principles, captures realized capital gains and losses resulting from changes in the general level of interest rates. These gains and losses are amortized into investment income over the expected remaining life of the investments sold.

 

On the date of demutualization, the majority of the net proceeds from the issuances of the Class B Stock and the IHC debt was allocated to our Financial Services Businesses. Also, on the date of demutualization, Prudential Holdings, LLC distributed $1.218 billion of the net proceeds of the IHC debt to Prudential Financial to use for general corporate purposes in the Financial Services Businesses. Prudential Holdings, LLC deposited $437 million of the net proceeds of the IHC debt in a debt service coverage account maintained in the Financial Services Businesses that, together with reinvested earnings thereon, constitutes a source of payment and security for the IHC debt. The remainder of the net proceeds, or $72 million, was used to purchase a guaranteed investment contract to fund a portion of the bond insurance related to the IHC debt. To the extent we use the debt service coverage account to service payments with respect to the IHC debt or to pay dividends to Prudential Financial for purposes of the Closed Block Business, a loan from the Financial Services Businesses to the Closed Block Business would be established. Such an inter-business loan would be repaid by the Closed Block Business to the Financial Services Businesses when earnings from the Closed Block Business replenish funds in the debt service coverage account to a specified level.

 

We believe that the proceeds from the issuances of the Class B Stock and IHC debt allocated to the Financial Services Businesses reflected capital in excess of that necessary to support the Closed Block Business and that the Closed Block Business as established has sufficient assets and cash flows to service the IHC debt. The Closed Block Business was financially leveraged through the issuance of the IHC debt, and dividends on the Class B Stock are subject to prior servicing of the IHC debt. It is expected that any inter-business loan referred to above will be repaid in full out of the Surplus and Related Assets, but not the Closed Block Assets. Any such loan will be subordinated to the IHC debt.

 

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The Financial Services Businesses will bear any expenses and liabilities from litigation affecting the Closed Block Policies and, as discussed below, the consequences of certain potential adverse tax determinations. In connection with the sale of the Class B Stock and IHC debt, we agreed to indemnify the investors in those securities with respect to certain matters, and any cost of that indemnification would be borne by the Financial Services Businesses.

 

Within the Closed Block Business, the assets and cash flows attributable to the Closed Block accrue solely to the benefit of the Closed Block policyholders through policyholder dividends after payment of benefits, expenses and taxes. The Surplus and Related Assets accrue to the benefit of the holders of Class B Stock. The earnings on, and distribution of, the Surplus and Related Assets over time will be the source or measure of payment of the interest and principal of the IHC debt and of dividends on the Class B Stock. The earnings of the Closed Block are reported as part of the Closed Block Business, although no cash flows or assets of the Closed Block accrue to the benefit of the holders of Common Stock or Class B Stock. The Closed Block Assets are not available to service interest or principal of the IHC debt or dividends on the Class B Stock.

 

Inter-Business Transfers and Allocation Policies

 

Prudential Financial’s Board of Directors has adopted certain policies with respect to inter-business transfers and accounting and tax matters, including the allocation of earnings. Such policies are summarized below. In the future, the Board of Directors may modify, rescind or add to any of these policies. However, the decision of the Board of Directors to modify, rescind or add to any of these policies is subject to the Board of Directors’ general fiduciary duties. In addition, we have agreed with the investors in the Class B Stock and the insurer of the IHC debt that, in most instances, the Board of Directors may not change these policies without their consent.

 

Inter-Business Transactions and Transfers

 

The transactions permitted between the Financial Services Businesses and the Closed Block Business, subject to any required regulatory approvals and the contractual limitations noted above, include the following:

 

    The Closed Block Business may lend to the Financial Services Businesses, and the Financial Services Businesses may lend to the Closed Block Business, in each case on terms no less favorable to the Closed Block Business than comparable internal loans and only for cash management purposes in the ordinary course of business and on market terms pursuant to our internal short-term cash management facility.

 

    Other transactions between the Closed Block and businesses outside of the Closed Block, including the Financial Services Businesses, are permitted if, among other things, such transactions benefit the Closed Block, are at fair market value and do not exceed, in any calendar year, a specified formula amount.

 

    Capital contributions to Prudential Insurance may be for the benefit of either the Financial Services Businesses or the Closed Block Business and assets of the Financial Services Businesses within Prudential Insurance may be transferred to the Closed Block Business within Prudential Insurance in the form of a loan which is subordinated to all existing obligations of the Closed Block Business and on market terms.

 

    An inter-business loan from the Financial Services Businesses to the Closed Block Business may be established to reflect usage of the net proceeds of the IHC debt initially deposited in the debt service coverage account, and any reinvested earnings thereon, to pay debt service on the IHC debt or dividends to Prudential Financial for purposes of the Closed Block Business.

 

    In addition to the foregoing, the Financial Services Businesses may lend to the Closed Block Business, on either a subordinated or non-subordinated basis, on market terms as may be approved by Prudential Financial.

 

    The Financial Services Businesses and the Closed Block Business may engage in such other transactions on market terms as may be approved by Prudential Financial and, if applicable, Prudential Insurance.

 

   

The Board of Directors has discretion to transfer assets of the Financial Services Businesses to the Closed Block, or use such assets for the benefit of Closed Block policyholders, if it believes such transfer or

 

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usage is in the best interests of the Financial Services Businesses, and such transfer or usage may be made without requiring any repayment of the amounts transferred or used or the payment of any other consideration from the Closed Block Business.

 

    Cash payments for administrative purposes from the Closed Block Business to the Financial Services Businesses are based on formulas that initially approximated the actual expenses incurred by the Financial Services Businesses to provide such services based on insurance and policies in force and statutory cash premiums. Administrative expenses recorded by the Closed Block Business, and the related income tax effect, are based upon actual expenses incurred under accounting principles generally accepted in the U.S., or GAAP, utilizing the Company’s methodology for the allocation of such expenses. Any difference in the cash amount transferred and actual expenses incurred as reported under GAAP will be recorded, on an after-tax basis at the applicable current rate, as direct adjustments to the respective equity balances of the Closed Block Business and the Financial Services Businesses, without the issuance of shares of either Business to the other Business. This direct equity adjustment modifies earnings available to each class of common stock for earnings per share purposes. Internal investment expenses recorded and paid by the Closed Block Business, and the related income tax effect, are based upon actual expenses incurred under GAAP and in accordance with internal arrangements governing recordkeeping, bank fees, accounting and reporting, asset allocation, investment policy and planning and analysis.

 

Accounting Policies

 

Accounting policies relating to the allocation of assets, liabilities, revenues and expenses between the two Businesses include:

 

    All our assets, liabilities, equity and earnings are allocated between the two Businesses and accounted for as if the Businesses were separate legal entities. Assets and liabilities allocated to the Closed Block Business are those that we consider appropriate to operate that Business. All remaining assets and liabilities of Prudential Financial and its subsidiaries constitute the assets and liabilities of the Financial Services Businesses.

 

    For financial reporting purposes, revenues; administrative, overhead and investment expenses; taxes other than federal income taxes; and certain commissions and commission-related expenses associated with the Closed Block Business are allocated between the Closed Block Business and the Financial Services Businesses in accordance with GAAP. Interest expense and routine maintenance and administrative costs generated by the IHC debt are considered directly attributable to the Closed Block Business and are therefore allocated to the Closed Block Business, except as indicated below.

 

    Any transfers of funds between the Closed Block Business and the Financial Services Businesses will typically be accounted for as either reimbursement of expense, investment income, return of principal or a subordinated loan, except as described under “—Inter-Business Transactions and Transfers” above.

 

    The Financial Services Businesses will bear any expenses and liabilities from litigation affecting the Closed Block Policies and the consequences of certain potential adverse tax determinations noted below. In connection with the sale of the Class B Stock and IHC debt, we agreed to indemnify the investors with respect to certain matters, and any such indemnification would be borne by the Financial Services Businesses.

 

Tax Allocation and Tax Treatment

 

The Closed Block Business within each legal entity is treated as if it were a consolidated subsidiary of Prudential Financial. Accordingly, if the Closed Block Business has taxable income, it recognizes its share of income tax as if it were a consolidated subsidiary of Prudential Financial. If the Closed Block Business has losses or credits, it recognizes a current income tax benefit.

 

If the Closed Block Business within any legal entity has taxable income, it pays its share of income tax in cash to the Financial Services Businesses. If it has losses or credits, it receives its benefit in cash from the Financial Services Businesses. If the losses or credits cannot be currently utilized in the consolidated federal income tax return of Prudential Financial for the year in which such losses or credits arise, the Closed Block

 

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Business will receive the full benefit in cash, and the Financial Services Businesses will subsequently recover the payment at the time the losses or credits are actually utilized in computing estimated payments or in the consolidated federal income tax return of Prudential Financial. Certain tax costs and benefits are determined under the Plan of Reorganization with respect to the Closed Block using statutory accounting rules that may give rise to tax costs or tax benefits prior to the time that those costs or benefits are actually realized for tax purposes. If at any time the Closed Block Business is allocated any such tax cost or a tax benefit under the Plan of Reorganization that is not realized at that same time under the relevant tax rules but will be realized in the future, the Closed Block Business will pay such tax cost or receive such tax benefit at that time, but it will be paid to or paid by the Financial Services Businesses. When such tax cost or tax benefit is subsequently realized under the relevant tax rules, the tax cost or tax benefit will be allocated to the Financial Services Businesses.

 

The foregoing principles are applied so as to prevent any item of income, deduction, gain, loss, credit, tax cost or tax benefit being taken into account more than once by the Closed Block Business or the Financial Services Businesses. For this purpose, items determined under the Plan of Reorganization with respect to any period prior to the date of demutualization were taken into account, with any such pre-demutualization tax attributes relating to the Closed Block being attributed to the Closed Block Business and all other pre-demutualization tax attributes being attributed to the Financial Services Businesses. The Closed Block Business will also pay or receive its appropriate share of tax or interest resulting from adjustments attributable to the settlement of tax controversies or the filing of amended tax returns to the extent that the tax or interest relates to controversies or amended returns arising with respect to the Closed Block Business and attributable to tax periods after the date of demutualization, except to the extent that the tax is directly attributable to the characterization of the IHC debt for tax purposes, in which case the tax will be borne by the Financial Services Businesses. In particular, if a change of tax law after the date of demutualization, including any change in the interpretation of any tax law, results in the recharacterization of all or part of the IHC debt for tax purposes or a significant reduction in the income tax benefit associated with the interest expense on all or part of the IHC debt, the Financial Services Businesses will continue to pay the foregone income tax benefit to the Closed Block Business until the IHC debt has been repaid or Prudential Holdings, LLC has been released from its obligations to the bond insurer and under the IHC debt as if such recharacterization or reduction of actual benefit had not occurred.

 

Financial Services Businesses

 

The Financial Services Businesses is comprised of three divisions, containing seven segments, and our Corporate and Other operations. The Insurance division is comprised of the Individual Life and Annuities and the Group Insurance segments. The Investment division is comprised of the Asset Management, Financial Advisory and Retirement segments. The International Insurance and Investments division is comprised of the International Insurance and International Investments segments.

 

See Note 20 to the Consolidated Financial Statements for revenues, income and loss, and total assets by segment of the Financial Services Businesses.

 

Insurance Division

 

The Insurance division conducts its business through the Individual Life and Annuities and the Group Insurance segments.

 

Individual Life and Annuities

 

Our Individual Life and Annuities segment manufactures and distributes individual variable life, term life, universal life and non-participating whole life insurance, and variable and fixed annuity products, primarily to the U.S. mass affluent market and mass market. In general, we consider households with investable assets or annual income in excess of $100,000 to be mass affluent in the U.S. market. Our life products are distributed through Prudential Agents and increasingly through third parties. Our annuity products are distributed through a diverse group of independent financial planners, wirehouses and banks, as well as through Prudential Agents.

 

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On May 1, 2003, we acquired Skandia U.S. Inc., which included American Skandia, Inc., or American Skandia, one of the largest distributors of variable annuities through independent financial planners in the U.S., from Skandia Insurance Company Ltd. for a total purchase price of $1.184 billion. Our acquisition of Skandia U.S. Inc. also included a mutual fund business that was combined with our Asset Management segment. Beginning May 1, 2003, the annuity operations of American Skandia are included as a component of our individual annuity business discussed below. The acquisition significantly expanded and diversified our third party distribution capabilities in the U.S. and broadened our array of product offerings. The integration of American Skandia with our original individual annuity business is complete and we continue to use the Prudential and American Skandia brands in the annuity market. See Note 3 to the Consolidated Financial Statements for additional information regarding the acquisition.

 

Skandia Insurance Company Ltd. agreed to indemnify us for certain losses, including losses resulting from litigation or regulatory matters relating to events prior to closing the transaction and brought within four years, subject to an aggregate cap of $1 billion. Under the terms of a License Agreement, we acquired the right to use the “American Skandia” name in conjunction with our own name in the U.S. in the annuity business for five years and in the mutual fund business for two years. Skandia Insurance Company Ltd. agreed not to compete with us in the U.S. in the annuity business for five years and in the mutual fund business for two years.

 

Products

 

Variable Life Insurance

 

We offer a number of individual variable life insurance products that provide a return linked to an underlying investment portfolio designated by the policyholder while providing the policyholder with the flexibility to change both the death benefit and premium payments. Each product provides for the deduction of charges and expenses from the customer’s investment account.

 

Term Life Insurance

 

We offer a variety of term life insurance products. Most term products include a conversion feature that allows the policyholder to convert the policy into permanent life insurance coverage.

 

Universal Life Insurance

 

We offer universal life insurance products that feature a market rate fixed interest investment account, flexible premiums and a choice of guarantees against lapse. We offer products that cover individual lives as well as survivorship universal life, which covers two individuals on a single policy and provides for payment of a death benefit upon the death of the second insured individual.

 

Non-participating Whole Life Insurance

 

We offer a non-participating whole life insurance product with guaranteed fixed level premiums and guaranteed cash values, which is principally used in the term to whole life conversion market.

 

Variable and Fixed Annuities

 

We offer variable annuities that provide our customers with the opportunity to invest in proprietary and non-proprietary mutual funds and fixed-rate options. The investments made by customers in the proprietary and non-proprietary mutual funds represent separate accounts for which the contractholder bears the investment risk. The investments made in the fixed rate options are credited with interest at rates we determine, subject to certain minimums. Additionally, our variable annuities products offer certain minimum death benefit and living benefit guarantee options. We also offer fixed annuities that provide a guarantee of principal and a guaranteed interest rate for a specified period of time.

 

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Marketing and Distribution

 

Prudential Agents

 

Our Prudential Agents distribute variable, term, universal and non-participating whole life insurance, variable and fixed annuities, and investment and protection products with proprietary and non-proprietary investment options as well as selected insurance and investment products manufactured by others.

 

The following table sets forth the number of Prudential Agents, field managers, home office and field staff and field offices as of the dates indicated.

 

     As of December 31,

     2005

   2004

   2003

Prudential Agents

   2,946    3,682    4,320

Field management

   248    292    411

Home office and field staff

   629    846    965

Prudential field offices

   51    53    72

 

Prudential Agents sell life insurance products primarily to customers in the U.S. mass and mass affluent markets, as well as small business owners. The majority of Prudential Agents are multi-line agents. Other than certain training allowances or salary paid at the beginning of their employment, we pay Prudential Agents on a commission basis for the products they sell. In addition to commissions, Prudential Agents receive the employee benefits that we provide to other Prudential employees generally, including medical and disability insurance, an employee savings program and qualified retirement plans.

 

Prior to the sale of our property and casualty insurance operations in 2003, the Individual Life and Annuities segment had been compensated for property and casualty insurance products sold through its distribution network. Following the sale, Prudential Agents have continued access to non-proprietary property and casualty products under distribution agreements entered into with the purchasers of these businesses; therefore, the Individual Life and Annuities segment continues to be compensated for sales of these products.

 

Third Party Distribution

 

Our individual life and annuity products are offered through a variety of third party channels, including independent brokers, general agencies, producer groups, wirehouses and banks. We focus on sales through independent intermediaries who provide life insurance solutions to protect individuals, families and businesses and support estate and wealth transfer planning. The life insurance products offered are generally the same as those available through Prudential Agents. The annuity products offered via the third party channels include both Prudential and American Skandia branded products. Our third party efforts are supported by a network of internal and external wholesalers.

 

Underwriting and Pricing

 

Life Insurance

 

Our life insurance underwriters follow detailed and uniform policies and procedures to assess and quantify the risk of our individual life insurance products. We require the applicant to take a variety of underwriting tests, such as medical examinations, electrocardiograms, blood tests, urine tests, chest x-rays and consumer investigative reports, depending on the age of the applicant and the amount of insurance requested. Our universal life insurance contracts and the fixed component of our variable life insurance contracts feature crediting rates, which are periodically reset. In resetting these rates, we consider the returns on our portfolios supporting the interest-sensitive life insurance business, current interest rates, the competitive environment and our profit objectives.

 

Annuities

 

We earn asset management fees based upon the average assets of the mutual funds in our variable annuity products and mortality and expense fees and other fees for various insurance-related options and features based

 

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on the average daily net assets value of the annuity separate accounts or the amount of guaranteed value. We price our fixed annuities as well as the fixed-rate options of our variable annuities based on assumptions as to investment returns, expenses and persistency. Competition also influences our pricing. We seek to maintain a spread between the return on our general account invested assets and the interest we credit on our fixed annuities. To encourage persistency, most of our variable and fixed annuities have declining surrender or withdrawal charges for a specified number of years.

 

Reserves

 

We establish reserves and policyholder fund liabilities to recognize our future benefit obligations for our in force life and annuity policies, including the minimum death benefit and living benefit guarantee features of some of these policies. For variable and interest-sensitive life insurance and annuity contracts, we establish policyholders’ account balances that represent cumulative gross premium payments plus credited interest and/or fund performance, less withdrawals, expenses and mortality charges.

 

Reinsurance

 

Since 2000, we have reinsured the majority of the mortality risk we assume under our newly sold individual life insurance policies. The maximum amount of individual life insurance we may retain on any life is $30 million under an individual policy and $50 million under a second-to-die life insurance policy.

 

Group Insurance

 

Our Group Insurance segment manufactures and distributes a full range of group life, long-term and short-term group disability, long-term care, and corporate- and trust-owned life insurance in the U.S. to institutional clients primarily for use in connection with employee and membership benefits plans. Group Insurance also sells accidental death and dismemberment and other ancillary coverages and provides plan administrative services in connection with its insurance coverages.

 

Products

 

Group Life Insurance

 

We offer group life insurance products including basic and supplemental term life insurance to employees, optional term life insurance to dependents of employees and universal life insurance. We also offer group variable universal life insurance and voluntary accidental death and dismemberment insurance. Many of our employee-pay coverages include a portability feature, allowing employees to retain their coverage when they change employers or retire. We also offer a living benefits option that allows insureds that are diagnosed with a terminal illness to receive a portion of their life insurance benefit upon diagnosis, in advance of death, to use as needed.

 

Group Disability Insurance

 

We offer short- and long-term group disability insurance, which protects against loss of wages due to illness or injury. Short-term disability generally provides coverage for three to six months, and long-term disability covers the period after short-term disability ends. We also offer absence management and integrated disability management services in conjunction with a third party.

 

Other

 

We offer individual and group long-term care insurance and group corporate- and trust-owned life insurance. Long-term care insurance protects the insured from the costs of an adult day care center, a nursing home or similar live-in care situation or a home health or a personal care aide. Group corporate- and trust-owned life insurance are group variable life insurance contracts typically used by large corporations to fund benefit plans for retired employees. They also may be used as vehicles to deliver deferred compensation or non-qualified benefits to active employees.

 

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Marketing and Distribution

 

Group Insurance has its own dedicated sales force that is organized around products and market segments and distributes primarily through employee benefits brokers and consultants. Group Insurance also distributes individual long-term care products through Prudential Agents as well as third party brokers and agents.

 

Underwriting and Pricing

 

We have developed standard rating systems for each product line in the Group Insurance segment based on our past experience and relevant industry experience. We are not obligated to accept any application for a policy or group of policies from any distributor. We follow uniform underwriting practices and procedures. If the coverage amount exceeds certain prescribed age and amount limits, we may require a prospective insured to submit evidence of insurability.

 

We determine premiums on some of our policies on a retrospective experience rated basis, in which case the policyholder bears some of the risk or receives some of the benefit associated with claim experience fluctuations during the policy period. We base product pricing of group insurance products on the expected pay-out of benefits that we calculate using assumptions for mortality, morbidity, interest, expenses and persistency, depending upon the specific product features.

 

Some of our other policies are not eligible to receive experience based refunds. The adequacy of our pricing of these policies determines their profitability during the rate guarantee period. The trend towards multiple year rate guarantees for new policies, which are typically three years for life insurance, two years for disability insurance and three to five years for group long-term care insurance, further increases the adverse consequences of mispricing coverage and lengthens the time it takes to reduce benefits ratios.

 

We routinely make pricing adjustments, when contractually permitted, that take into account the emerging experience on our group insurance products. While there can be no assurance, we expect these actions, as well as pricing discipline in writing new business, will allow us to achieve benefits ratios over time that are consistent with our profit objectives.

 

Reserves

 

We establish and carry as liabilities actuarially determined reserves that we believe will be adequate to meet our future obligations. We base these reserves on actuarially recognized methods using morbidity and mortality tables in general use in the U.S., which we modify to reflect our actual experience when appropriate. Reserves also include claims reported but not yet paid, and claims incurred but not reported.

 

Investment Division

 

The Investment division conducts its business through the Asset Management, Financial Advisory and Retirement segments.

 

Asset Management

 

The Asset Management segment provides a broad array of investment management and advisory services, mutual funds and other structured products. These products and services are provided to the public and private marketplace, as well as our Insurance division, International Insurance and Investments division and Retirement segment.

 

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Operating Data

 

The following tables set forth the assets under management of the investment management and advisory services group of our Asset Management segment at fair market value by asset class and source as of the dates indicated.

 

     December 31, 2005

     Equity

  

Fixed

Income(4)


   Real
Estate


   Total

     (in billions)

Retail customers(1)

   $ 52.7    $ 19.2    $ 1.6    $ 73.5

Institutional customers(2)

     48.9      68.2      17.6      134.7

General account(3)

     3.5      154.6      1.1      159.2
    

  

  

  

Total

   $ 105.1    $ 242.0    $ 20.3    $ 367.4
    

  

  

  

     December 31, 2004

     Equity

  

Fixed

Income(4)


  

Real

Estate


   Total

     (in billions)

Retail customers(1)

   $ 45.7    $ 19.3    $ 1.0    $ 66.0

Institutional customers(2)

     42.4      62.6      14.2      119.2

General account(3)

     3.1      148.4      1.2      152.7
    

  

  

  

Total

   $ 91.2    $ 230.3    $ 16.4    $ 337.9
    

  

  

  

     December 31, 2003

     Equity

  

Fixed

Income(4)


  

Real

Estate


   Total

     (in billions)

Retail customers(1)

   $ 42.5    $ 37.7    $ 1.0    $ 81.2

Institutional customers(2)

     31.2      50.8      12.8      94.8

General account(3)

     2.9      123.8      1.1      127.8
    

  

  

  

Total

   $ 76.6    $ 212.3    $ 14.9    $ 303.8
    

  

  

  


(1)   Consists of individual mutual funds, including investments in our mutual funds through wrap-fee products, defined contribution plan products and both variable annuities and variable life insurance assets in our separate accounts. Fixed annuities and the fixed rate options of both variable annuities and variable life insurance are included in our general account. Amounts as of December 31, 2003 include money market mutual fund balances of $17.8 billion, which as of December 31, 2004, were essentially eliminated due to the replacement of these funds with other investment alternatives for brokerage clients of Wachovia Securities. The resulting reduction in asset management fees has been offset by payments from Wachovia Corporation under an agreement dated as of July 30, 2004 implementing arrangements with respect to money market mutual funds in connection with the combination of our retail securities brokerage and clearing operations with those of Wachovia Corporation. The agreement extends for ten years after termination of the joint venture. The revenue from Wachovia Corporation under this agreement was $54 million in 2005 and $35 million in 2004.
(2)   Consists of third party institutional assets, group insurance contracts and assets associated with certain proprietary investing activities. Amounts as of December 31, 2005 and 2004 include assets associated with our acquisition of CIGNA Corporation’s retirement business on April 1, 2004, which amounted to $9.0 billion as of that date.
(3)   Amounts as of December 31, 2005 and 2004 include assets associated with our acquisition of CIGNA Corporation’s retirement business on April 1, 2004, which amounted to $18.7 billion as of that date.
(4)   Includes private fixed income assets of institutional customers of $8.6 billion as of December 31, 2005, $7.9 billion as of December 31, 2004 and $6.3 billion as of December 31, 2003, and private fixed income assets in our general account of $53.4 billion, $55.7 billion and $47.3 billion, as of those dates, respectively.

 

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The following table sets forth for our Asset Management segment’s mutual fund assets under management and wrap-fee product assets under administration, at fair market value, as of the dates indicated.

 

     As of December 31,

     2005

   2004

   2003

     (in billions)

Equity

   $ 21.6    $ 20.0    $ 19.1

Fixed income

     5.9      7.0      8.0

Money market(1)

     3.8      3.7      19.7
    

  

  

Total mutual funds(2)

   $ 31.3    $ 30.7    $ 46.8
    

  

  

Wrap-fee products(3)

   $ 55.2    $ 41.3    $ 19.8
    

  

  


(1)   Amounts as of December 31, 2003 include money market mutual fund balances of $15.6 billion that, as of December 31, 2004, were essentially eliminated due to the replacement of these funds with other investment alternatives for brokerage clients of Wachovia Securities.
(2)   Mutual funds includes those sold as retail investment products. Also includes balances from funds for which we act as sub-adviser of $4.2 billion, $3.7 billion and $3.2 billion as of December 31, 2005, 2004 and 2003, respectively.
(3)   During 2004 we became a provider of program services for certain mutual fund wrap and separately managed account platforms of Wachovia Securities, which resulted in an increase of $13.9 billion in wrap-fee product assets under administration. The contractual arrangement with Wachovia Securities related to managed account services, which was originally scheduled to expire July 1, 2006, was amended effective July 1, 2005 to provide essentially for a fixed fee for managed account services and is now scheduled to expire July 1, 2008. Wrap-fee product assets also include $3.5 billion, $3.6 billion and $3.4 billion of proprietary assets as of December 31, 2005, 2004 and 2003, respectively.

 

Products and Services

 

Public Fixed Income Asset Management

 

Our public fixed income organization manages fixed income portfolios for domestic and international institutional and retail clients, as well as for our general account. Our products range from broad market strategies, such as index funds, to short- and long-duration strategies. We manage customized asset liability strategies, as well as single sector strategies across the fixed income market. Strategies are managed by seasoned portfolio managers with securities selected by our nine sector specialist teams: Corporate, High Yield, U.S. Liquidity (U.S. government and mortgage), Global, Municipal, Money Market, Emerging Market, Bank Loan, and Structured Product. We also manage relative value hedge strategies and collateralized debt obligations.

 

Public Equity Asset Management

 

Our public equity organization provides discretionary and non-discretionary asset management services to a wide range of clients. We manage a broad array of publicly traded equity asset classes using various investment styles. The public equity organization is comprised of two wholly owned registered investment advisors, Jennison Associates, LLC and Quantitative Management Associates, LLC. Jennison Associates uses fundamental, team-based research to manage portfolios for institutional, sub-advisory, and private clients through separately managed and commingled vehicles, including mutual funds. Quantitative Management Associates specializes in the discipline of quantitative investing tailored to client objectives.

 

Private Fixed Income and Equity Asset Management

 

Our private fixed income organization provides asset management services by investing predominantly in private placement investment grade debt securities, as well as below investment grade debt securities, and mezzanine debt financing. These investment capabilities are utilized by our general account and institutional clients through direct advisory accounts, separate accounts, or private fund structures. A majority of the private placement investments are directly originated by our investment staff.

 

The remaining assets we manage, primarily for our general account, include venture capital, leveraged buyouts, development capital, mezzanine debt and certain special situations.

 

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Commercial Mortgage Origination, Servicing and Securitization

 

Our commercial mortgage operations provide mortgage origination and servicing for our general account, institutional clients, and government sponsored entities such as Fannie Mae and the Federal Housing Administration. We originate and purchase commercial mortgages that we in turn sell through securitization transactions. We also originate interim loans when we expect the loans will lead to securitization opportunities. As of December 31, 2005, our warehouse principal balance of mortgages pending securitization and interim loans totaled approximately $1,141 million. In general, the assets we securitize are serviced by our investment management and advisory services group.

 

Real Estate Asset Management

 

Our real estate organization provides asset management services for single-client and commingled real estate portfolios and manufactures and manages a variety of real estate investment vehicles, primarily for institutional clients. Our real estate investment vehicles range from fully diversified open-end funds to specialized closed-end funds that invest in specific types of properties or specific geographic regions or follow other specific investment strategies.

 

Proprietary Investments

 

We make proprietary investments in private equity and in debt, equity and real estate securities, including controlling interests. Certain proprietary investments are made with the intention to sell or syndicate to investors, including our general account, or for placement in funds and structured products that we offer and manage. These proprietary investments, with a fair value of approximately $590 billion as of December 31, 2005, are made primarily for purposes of co-investment in our managed funds and structured products.

 

Mutual Fund and Wrap-fee Products

 

We manufacture, distribute and service investment management products utilizing proprietary and non-proprietary asset management expertise in the U.S. retail market. Our products are designed to be sold primarily by financial professionals including both Prudential Agents and third party advisors. We offer a family of retail investment products consisting of 69 mutual funds as of December 31, 2005. These products cover a wide array of investment styles and objectives designed to attract and retain assets of individuals with varying objectives and to accommodate investors’ changing financial needs. On May 1, 2003, we acquired Skandia U.S. Inc., which included a mutual fund business. The operations of the acquired mutual fund business have been combined with our existing mutual fund business.

 

We also provide services for the private label wrap-fee products of other financial services firms that provide access to mutual funds and separate account products. Wrap-fee products have higher minimum investment levels than our mutual funds and offer a choice of both proprietary and non-proprietary investment management. We no longer sponsor unit investment trusts and transferred our sponsorship of existing trusts to a successor sponsor as of January 1, 2004.

 

Marketing and Distribution

 

Most of the retail customer assets under management are invested in our mutual funds and our variable annuities and variable life insurance products. These assets are gathered by the Insurance division, the International Insurance and Investments division and third party networks, including financial advisors associated with our joint venture with Wachovia Corporation discussed under “—Financial Advisory” below. Third party intermediary sales represent the fastest growing sales channel on a net basis. Additionally, we work with third party product manufacturers and distributors to include our investment options in their products and platforms.

 

We provide investment management services for our institutional customers through a proprietary sales force.

 

We also provide investment management services across a broad array of asset classes for our general account, as described under “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Realized Investment Gains and General Account Investments—General Account Investments.”

 

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Financial Advisory

 

The Financial Advisory segment consists of our 38% investment in Wachovia Securities and our equity sales, trading and research operations.

 

Wachovia Securities

 

On July 1, 2003, we combined our retail securities brokerage and clearing operations with those of Wachovia Corporation, or Wachovia, and formed Wachovia Securities Financial Holdings, LLC, or Wachovia Securities, a joint venture headquartered in Richmond, Virginia. We have a 38% ownership interest in the joint venture, while Wachovia owns the remaining 62%. We account for our 38% ownership of the joint venture under the equity method of accounting and, beginning on July 1, 2003, report earnings from the joint venture on the equity method basis. Periods prior to July 1, 2003 reflect the results of our previously wholly owned securities brokerage and clearing operations on a fully consolidated basis.

 

Wachovia Securities, one of the nation’s largest retail brokerage and clearing organizations, provides full service securities brokerage and financial advisory services to individuals and businesses. As of December 31, 2005, it had total client assets of $684 billion and approximately 10,500 registered representatives.

 

Wachovia and Wachovia Securities are key distribution partners for certain of our products, including our mutual funds and individual annuities that are distributed through their financial advisors, bank channel and independent channel. In addition, we are a service provider to the managed account platform and certain wrap-fee programs offered by Wachovia Securities.

 

The segment results for all periods presented reflect transition costs, including transition costs incurred by the joint venture, in connection with the combination as well as expenses relating to obligations and costs we retained in connection with the contributed businesses, primarily for litigation and regulatory matters, including accruals for estimated settlement costs related to market timing issues under active negotiation with state and federal authorities. Integration initiatives associated with the Wachovia transaction were completed in the first half of 2005. Prudential Financial and Wachovia have each agreed to indemnify the other for certain losses, including losses resulting from litigation or regulatory matters relating to certain events prior to March 31, 2004, arising from the operations of their respective contributed businesses.

 

At any time after July 1, 2005 and on or prior to July 1, 2008, we may, subject to certain limitations, require Wachovia to purchase our interests in the new organization for a price generally equal to our initial $1.0 billion equity contribution plus our share of transition costs, as adjusted to reflect additional investments made by us. At any time after July 1, 2008, we may, subject to certain limitations, require Wachovia to purchase our interests in the new organization for a price generally equal to our share of the then appraised value of the common equity of the organization, determined as if it were a public company and including a control premium such as would apply in the case of a sale of 100% of its common equity. The agreement between Prudential Financial and Wachovia also gives us put rights, and Wachovia call rights, in certain other specified circumstances, at prices determined in accordance with the agreement.

 

Equity Sales, Trading and Research Operations

 

We provide research coverage, primarily to institutional clients, of U.S. equity securities, and engage in sales and trading on both an agency and a principal basis in listed and NASDAQ equities and equity options. We make a market in more than 900 NASDAQ securities.

 

Our research analysts produce reports and studies on the economy; the domestic equity markets, industries and specific companies; investment and portfolio strategies; and regulatory, political, legislative and tax issues. We seek to focus our research coverage on companies of greatest interest to our clients, located both in the U.S. and abroad.

 

Retirement

 

Our Retirement segment, which we refer to in the marketplace as Prudential Retirement, provides retirement-plan products and services to public, private, and not-for-profit organizations. Our Full Service line of

 

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business provides recordkeeping, plan administration, actuarial advisory services, tailored participant education and communication services, trustee services and institutional and retail investment funds. While we are focused primarily on servicing defined contribution and defined benefit plans, we also serve non-qualified plans. For clients with both defined contribution and defined benefit plans, we offer integrated defined benefit/defined contribution recordkeeping services. For participants leaving our clients’ plans, we provide a broad range of rollover products through our broker-dealer and bank. In addition, in our Institutional Investment Products line of business, we offer guaranteed investment contracts, or GICs, funding agreements, institutional and retail notes, structured settlement annuities and group annuities for defined contribution plans, defined benefit plans and non-qualified entities. Results of our Institutional Investments Products line of business include proprietary spread lending activities where we borrow on a secured or unsecured basis to support investments on which we earn a spread between the asset yield and liability cost.

 

On April 1, 2004, we acquired the retirement business of CIGNA Corporation, or CIGNA, for $2.123 billion. The acquisition included the purchase of all the shares of CIGNA Life Insurance Company, or CIGNA Life, which became an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Prudential Financial. Prior to the acquisition, CIGNA Life entered into reinsurance arrangements with CIGNA to effect the transfer of the retirement business included in the transaction to CIGNA Life. Subsequent to the acquisition, we changed the name of CIGNA Life to Prudential Retirement Insurance and Annuity Company, or PRIAC. While these reinsurance agreements are still in place, the insurance contracts falling under these agreements have decreased significantly as customers have agreed to substitute PRIAC for CIGNA in their respective contracts. See Note 3 to the Consolidated Financial Statements for additional information regarding the acquisition. The transaction broadened our array of product offerings by adding integrated defined benefit/defined contribution services, actuarial advisory services and institutional separate account investment funds to our product and service mix. The process of integrating CIGNA’s retirement business with our original retirement business has proceeded in accordance with management’s expectations and integration-related activities were substantially complete as of December 31, 2005.

 

CIGNA has agreed to indemnify us for certain losses, including, subject to a basket of $25 million with a $12.5 million deductible and a cap of 75 percent of the purchase price, losses related to breaches by CIGNA of its representations and warranties. Prudential Financial has agreed to indemnify CIGNA for any breach by PRIAC of its contractual obligations under the reinsurance and other agreements.

 

Products and Services

 

Full Service

 

Our Full Service business offers plan sponsors and their participants a broad range of products and services to assist in the delivery and administration of defined contribution, defined benefit, and non-qualified retirement plans, including recordkeeping and administrative services, comprehensive investment offerings and advisory services to assist plan sponsors in managing fiduciary obligations. We offer as part of our investment products a variety of general and separate account stable value products, as well as retail mutual funds and institutional funds advised by affiliated and non-affiliated investment managers. Revenue is generated from asset-based fees, recordkeeping and other advisory fees, and the spread between the rate of return on investments we make and the interest rates we credit, less expenses, on certain stable value products that are discussed in greater detail below. Prudential Financial’s asset management units earn fees from management of general account assets supporting retirement products including stable value products as discussed below and, to the extent these units are selected to manage client assets associated with fee-based products, they also earn asset management fees related to those assets.

 

Our Full Service general account stable value products contain an obligation to pay interest at a specified rate for a specific period of time and to repay account balances or market value upon contract termination. Substantially all of these stable value general account products are either fully or partially participating, with annual or semi-annual rate resets giving effect to previous investment experience. Profits from partially participating general account products result from the spread between the rate of return on the investments we make and the interest rates we credit, less expenses. In addition, we earn asset management fees for these general account products for managing the related assets as well as administrative fees for providing recordkeeping and other administrative services.

 

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We also offer fee-based separate account products, through which customer funds are held in either a separate account or a client-owned trust. These products generally pass all of the investment results to the customer. In certain cases, these contracts are subject to a minimum interest rate guarantee. We earn administrative fees for these separate account products and to the extent that Prudential Financial’s asset management units are selected to manage the client assets, those units also earn asset management fees.

 

Our Full Service offerings are supported by participant communications and education programs, and a broad range of advisory services including nondiscrimination testing, plan document services, signature-ready documents for required filings, and full actuarial support for defined benefit plans. Additional services include non-qualified plan administration, investment advisory services, and merger and acquisition support.

 

In addition, we offer a broad range of brokerage and banking solutions, including rollover IRA’s and mutual funds. Our rollover business is marketed to participants who terminate or retire from employers for whom we provide retirement plan recordkeeping services.

 

Institutional Investment Products

 

The Institutional Investment Products business primarily offers products to the Stable Value and Payout Annuity Markets.

 

Stable Value Markets.    Our Stable Value Markets area manufactures general account investment-only products for use in retail and institutional capital markets and qualified plan markets. Our primary investment-only products are GICs, funding agreements, retail notes and institutional notes. This unit also manufactures general and separate account stable value products that are used in our Full Service business.

 

Our investment-only general account products offered within this market contain an obligation to pay interest at a specified rate and to repay principal at maturity or following contract termination. Because these obligations are backed by our general account, we bear the investment and asset/liability management risk associated with these contracts. Generally, profits from our general account products result from the spread between the rate of return on the investments we make and the interest rates we credit, less expenses. The credited interest rates we offer are impacted by many factors, including the financial strength ratings of our domestic insurance companies.

 

We also offer investment-only fee-based stable value products, through which customers’ funds are held in either a separate account or a client-owned trust. We pass investment results through to the customer, subject to a minimum interest rate guarantee. To the extent that Prudential Financial’s asset management units are selected to manage client assets associated with fee-based products, those units also earn asset management fees.

 

Payout Annuity Markets.    Our Payout Annuity Markets area offers traditional general and separate account products designed to provide a predictable source of lifetime income, such as structured settlements, voluntary income products and close-out annuities, which fulfill the payment guarantee needs of the personal injury lawsuit settlement market, the distribution needs of defined contribution participants and the payment obligations of defined benefit plans, respectively. With our general account products, the obligation to make annuity payments to our annuitants is backed by our general account assets, and we bear all of the investment, mortality, retirement, and asset/liability management risk associated with these contracts. Our profits from structured settlements, voluntary income products and close-out annuities result from the excess of the returns we earn on the investments we make over the cost of providing benefits under the contracts, which include factors such as the timing of retirements, mortality experience and administrative expenses.

 

We also offer participating separate account annuity contracts, which are fee-based products that cover payments to retirees to be made by defined benefit plans. These contracts permit a plan sponsor to retain the risks and rewards of investment and actuarial results while receiving a general account guarantee for all annuity payments covered by the contract. To the extent that Prudential Financial’s asset management units are selected to manage client assets associated with fee-based products, those units also earn asset management fees.

 

Marketing and Distribution

 

We distribute our products through a variety of channels. In our Full Service business, we employ a centralized wholesaling force, as well as field sales representatives who manage our distribution efforts in offices

 

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across the country. We also sell our products and services through financial advisors of our Wachovia joint venture, as well as through other third-party financial advisors, brokers, and benefits consultants and, to a lesser extent, directly to plan sponsors.

 

In our Stable Value Markets area within our Institutional Investment Products business, prior to 2003, GICs and funding agreements were sold primarily to institutional investors through our direct sales force and through intermediaries. In 2003, we broadened our distribution by establishing a Funding Agreement Notes Issuance Program, or FANIP, pursuant to which a Delaware statutory trust issues medium-term notes secured by funding agreements issued to the trust by Prudential Insurance. The medium-term notes are sold to institutional investors through intermediaries under Rule 144A and Regulation S of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (“Securities Act”). In addition, a portion of Prudential Financial’s SEC-registered medium-term notes program is allocated for sales to retail investors. The proceeds from the sale of the retail notes are used by Prudential Financial to purchase funding agreements from Prudential Insurance.

 

In our Payout Annuity Markets area within our Institutional Investment Products business, structured settlements are distributed through structured settlement specialists. Voluntary income products are distributed through the defined contribution portion of our Full Service business, directly to plan sponsors or as part of annuity shopping services. Close-out annuities and participating separate account annuity products are typically distributed through actuarial consultants.

 

Underwriting and Pricing

 

We set our rates for our stable value products within our Full Service and Institutional Investment Products businesses using a pricing model that considers the investment environment and our risk, expense and profitability assumptions. In addition, for products within our Payout Annuity Market area, our model also uses assumptions for mortality and early retirement risks. Upon sale of a product, we adjust the duration of our asset portfolio and lock in the prevailing interest rates. Management continuously monitors cash flow experience and works closely with our Asset Liability and Risk Management Group to review performance and ensure compliance with our investment policies.

 

Reserves

 

We establish reserves and policyholder fund liabilities to recognize our future benefit obligations for our products. Our liabilities for accumulation products generally represent cumulative contractholder account balances and additional reserves for investment experience that will accrue to the customer but have not yet been reflected in credited rates. Our liabilities for products within our Payout Annuity Market area represent the present value of future guaranteed benefits plus maintenance expenses and are based on our own actuarial assumptions. We perform a cash flow analysis in conjunction with determining our reserves for future policy benefits.

 

International Insurance and Investments Division

 

The International Insurance and Investments division conducts its business through the International Insurance and International Investments segments.

 

International Insurance

 

Our International Insurance segment manufactures and distributes individual life insurance products to the mass affluent and affluent markets in Japan, Korea and other foreign countries through Life Planners. In addition, we offer similar products to the broad middle income market across Japan through Life Advisors, who are associated with our separately-operated Gibraltar Life Insurance Company, Ltd., or Gibraltar Life, operations, which we acquired in April 2001. We commenced sales in foreign markets using the Life Planner model, as follows: Japan, 1988; Taiwan, 1990; Italy, 1990; Korea, 1991; Brazil, 1998; Argentina, 1999; the Philippines, 1999; and Poland, 2000. We also have a representative office in China.

 

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We manage each country operation on a stand-alone basis with local management and sales teams initially supported by senior International Insurance staff based in Asia and Newark, New Jersey. Each operation has its own marketing, underwriting and claims and investment management functions, with the exception of Japan, for which a large portion of the investment portfolio is managed by our International Investments segment. Each operation invests predominantly in local currency securities, typically bonds issued by the local government or its agencies. In our larger operations, we have more diversified portfolios which include investments in U.S. dollar securities.

 

On November 1, 2004, we acquired Aoba Life Insurance Company, Ltd., or Aoba Life, for $191 million of total consideration. Aoba Life is a Japanese life insurer with a run-off book of insurance contracts that was formerly owned by Artemis S.A., a French investment holding company. Aoba Life is the successor entity to the former Nissan Mutual Life Insurance Company that was restructured in June 1997. We integrated and merged Aoba Life into our Life Planner operation in Japan in February 2005.

 

Products

 

We currently offer various traditional whole life, term life and endowment policies, which provide for payment on the earlier of death or maturity, and retirement income life insurance products which combine an insurance protection element similar to that of whole life insurance with a retirement income feature. In some of our operations we also offer certain health products with fixed benefits, as well as annuity products, primarily U.S. dollar denominated fixed annuities in Gibraltar Life. We also offer variable life products in Japan, Korea and Taiwan and interest-sensitive life products in Japan, Taiwan and Argentina. Generally, our international insurance products are non-participating and denominated in local currency, with the exception of products in Argentina, which are mostly U.S. dollar denominated, and certain policies in Japan and Korea that are also U.S. dollar denominated. For these dollar denominated products, both premiums and benefits are payable in U.S. dollars.

 

Marketing and Distribution

 

The following table sets forth the number of Life Planners and Life Advisors, as well as the number of field managers and agencies for the periods indicated.

 

     Japan

     Excluding Gibraltar Life

   Gibraltar Life

     As of December 31,

   As of December 31,

     2005

   2004

   2003

   2005

   2004

   2003

Number of Life Planners/Life Advisors

   2,753    2,550    2,347    5,436    4,970    4,826

Number of field managers

   443    368    358    625    615    603

Number of agencies

   80    70    60    78    81    80
     All Other Countries

   Total

     As of December 31,

   As of December 31,

     2005

   2004

   2003

   2005

   2004

   2003

Number of Life Planners/Life Advisors

   2,941    2,835    2,642    11,130    10,355    9,815

Number of field managers

   570    598    543    1,638    1,581    1,504

Number of agencies

   132    142    118    290    293    258

 

Life Planner Model

 

Our Life Planner model is significantly different from the way traditional industry participants offer life insurance in Japan and in most of the other countries where we do business. It differs from the way we market through the Life Advisors of Gibraltar Life as well. We believe that our selection standards, training, supervision and compensation package are key to the Life Planner model and have helped our International Insurance segment achieve higher rates of agent retention, agent productivity and policy persistency than our local competitors. In general, we recruit Life Planners with:

 

    university degrees, so that the Life Planner will have the same educational background and outlook as the target customer;

 

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    a minimum of two years of sales or sales management experience;

 

    no life insurance sales experience; and

 

    a pattern of job stability and success.

 

The Life Planner’s objective is to sell protection-oriented life insurance products on a needs basis to mass affluent and affluent customers.

 

Life Advisors

 

Our Life Advisors are the proprietary distribution force for products offered by Gibraltar Life. Their focus is to provide individual protection products to the broad middle income market in Japan, particularly through relationships with affinity groups. In July 2001, we introduced a new compensation plan designed to improve productivity and persistency that is similar to compensation plans in our other International Insurance operations. Following the acquisition of Gibraltar Life, through 2003, the number of Life Advisors decreased as we instituted measures to increase the cost-effectiveness of this distribution channel, including a transition from a compensation structure that was formerly based mainly on fixed compensation, to variable compensation based on sales production. The number of Life Advisors increased in 2004 and 2005 following the completion of our phase-in of minimum production requirements in the second half of 2004 and subsequently increased recruiting. We believe that the size of the Life Advisor sales force has been stabilized and may show modest growth in the future.

 

Underwriting and Pricing

 

Our International Insurance segment is subject to substantial local regulation that is generally more restrictive for product offerings, pricing and structure than U.S. insurance regulation. Each International Insurance operation has its own underwriting department that employs variations of our domestic practices in underwriting individual policy risks. In setting underwriting limits, we also consider local industry standards to prevent adverse selection and to stay abreast of industry trends. In addition, we set underwriting limits together with each operation’s reinsurers.

 

Pricing of individual life insurance products, particularly in Japan and Korea, is more regulated than in the U.S. In Japan, premiums are different for participating and non-participating products, but within each product type they are generally similar for all companies. Mortality and morbidity rates and interest rates that we use to calculate premiums are restricted by regulation on the basis of product type. Interest rates do not always reflect the market rates we earn on our investments, and, as a result, we experience negative spreads between the rate we guarantee and the rate we earn on investments. These spreads had a negative impact on the results of our Japanese insurance operations, other than Gibraltar Life, over the past three years, and the profitability on our products in Japan from these operations results primarily from margins on mortality, morbidity and expense charges.

 

Reserves

 

We establish and carry as liabilities actuarially determined reserves that we believe will meet our future obligations. We base fixed death benefit reserves on assumptions we believe to be appropriate for investment yield, persistency, mortality and morbidity rates, expenses and margins for adverse deviation. In Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Argentina, we set reserves for variable and interest-sensitive life products according to premiums collected plus investment results credited less charges for cost of insurance and administration fees.

 

Reinsurance

 

International Insurance reinsures portions of its insurance risks with both selected third party reinsurers and Prudential Insurance under reinsurance agreements primarily on a yearly renewable term basis. International Insurance also buys catastrophe reinsurance that covers multiple deaths from a single occurrence in our Life Planner operations in Japan, Taiwan and Brazil. We also have coinsurance agreements with Prudential Insurance for much of the U.S. dollar denominated business in our Japanese insurance operations.

 

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International Investments

 

Our International Investments segment offers proprietary and non-proprietary asset management, investment advice and services to retail and institutional clients in selected international markets. These services are marketed through our own and third party distribution networks and encompass the businesses of international investments and global derivatives, described in more detail below.

 

On February 27, 2004, we acquired an 80 percent interest in Hyundai Investment and Securities Co., Ltd. and its subsidiary Hyundai Investment Trust Management Co., Ltd., a Korean asset management firm, from the Korean Deposit Insurance Corporation, an agency of the Korean government, for $301 million in cash, including $210 million used to repay debt assumed. We may choose to acquire, or be required to acquire, the remaining 20 percent three to six years after the closing. Subsequent to the acquisition, the company was renamed Prudential Investment & Securities Co., Ltd., or PISC, and its results are included within our international investments operations discussed below. As a result of this acquisition, PISC is the largest foreign-owned asset manager in Korea in terms of assets under management. See Note 3 to the Consolidated Financial Statements for additional information regarding the acquisition.

 

Our international investments operations include manufacturing of proprietary products and distribution of both proprietary and non-proprietary products, tailored to meet client needs. In this business, we invest in asset management and distribution businesses in targeted countries to expand our mass affluent customer base outside the U.S. and to increase our global assets under management. Additionally, this business manages a large portion of the general account investment portfolio of our international insurance operations in Japan.

 

Our global derivatives operations provide advice, sales and trading on a global basis covering a wide variety of commodity, financial and foreign exchange futures and forward contracts, including agricultural commodities, base and precious metals, major currencies, interest rate and stock indices. We conduct these operations through offices in the U.S., Europe and Asia, and are members of most major futures exchanges. Our client base is primarily institutional. We conduct futures transactions on margin according to the regulations of the different futures exchanges.

 

See “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—International Insurance and Investments Division” and “Consolidated Financial Statements—Note 20, Segment Information” for a discussion of financial information about geographic areas.

 

Corporate and Other

 

Corporate and Other includes corporate operations, after allocations to our business segments, real estate and relocation services, and divested businesses except for those that qualify for “discontinued operations” accounting treatment under GAAP.

 

Corporate Operations

 

Corporate operations consist primarily of: (1) corporate-level income and expenses, after allocation to any of our business segments, including income from our qualified pension plans and investment returns on our capital that is not deployed in any of our segments; (2) returns from investments that we do not allocate to any of our business segments, including, from time to time, debt-financed investment portfolios, and the impact of transactions with other segments; and (3) wind-down businesses which are described in further detail below. Corporate operations also include certain retained obligations relating to policyholders whom we had previously agreed to provide insurance for reduced or no premium in accordance with contractual settlements related to prior individual life insurance sales practices remediation.

 

Wind-down Businesses

 

We have not actively engaged in the life reinsurance market since the early 1990s; however, we remain subject to mortality risk for certain assumed individual life insurance polices under the terms of the reinsurance treaties.

 

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In 1992, we ceased writing individual disability income policies and a year later ceased writing hospital expense and major medical policies due to declining sales and poor financial results. Most of our individual disability income policies are non-cancelable; however, we reinsured all of these policies as of July 1999. The 1997 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act guarantees renewal of all hospital and medical expense policies. Under certain circumstances, we are permitted to change the premiums charged for individual health coverage if we can demonstrate that the premiums have not been sufficient to pay claims and expenses.

 

Residential Real Estate Brokerage Franchise and Relocation Services

 

Prudential Real Estate and Relocation Services is our integrated real estate brokerage franchise and relocation services business. The real estate group markets franchises primarily to existing real estate companies. Our franchise agreements grant the franchisee the right to use the Prudential name and real estate service marks in return for royalty payments on gross commissions generated by the franchisees. The franchises generally are independently owned and operated. This business also has a finance subsidiary that makes debt and equity investments in a limited number of franchisees.

 

Our relocation group offers institutional clients a variety of services in connection with the relocation of their employees. These services include coordination of appraisal, inspection and sale of relocating employees’ homes, equity advances to relocating employees, assistance in locating homes at the relocating employee’s destination, household goods moving services, client cost-tracking and a variety of relocation policy and group move consulting services.

 

Divested Businesses

 

The following operations are businesses that have been or will be sold or exited that did not qualify for “discontinued operations” accounting treatment under GAAP. We include the results of these divested businesses in our income from continuing operations, but we exclude these results from our adjusted operating income. See “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Consolidated Results of Operations” for an explanation of adjusted operating income.

 

Canadian Operations

 

We previously marketed individual and group life insurance, annuities and group health insurance in Canada through a Canadian branch of Prudential Insurance and through Prudential of America Life Insurance Company, or PALIC, as well as property and casualty insurance through other Canadian operations. In 1996, we sold substantially all of the Canadian branch’s operations and policies in force and all of our Canadian property and casualty operations. In 2000, we sold our interest in PALIC. We have indemnified the purchasers of both the Canadian branch and PALIC for certain liabilities with respect to claims related to sales practices or market conduct issues arising from operations prior to the sale, except for the sale of the property and casualty insurance operations. We also remain subject to mortality risk related to certain policies sold by PALIC under assumed reinsurance.

 

We retained and continue to service several blocks of insurance not sold with our divested Canadian branch’s operations, a significant portion of which constitutes individual life insurance for which we have waived the premium. As a result of a reinsurance transaction that we anticipate entering into during 2006, the financial results of the retained Canadian business, which had been reflected as a wind-down business prior to the fourth quarter of 2005, are now reflected in divested businesses for all periods presented.

 

Property and Casualty Insurance

 

In the fourth quarter of 2003, we sold our property and casualty insurance companies that operated nationally in 48 states outside of New Jersey, and the District of Columbia, to Liberty Mutual Group, or Liberty Mutual, and our New Jersey property and casualty insurance companies to Palisades Group. Historically, the companies we sold manufactured and distributed personal lines property and casualty insurance products, principally automobile and homeowners coverages, to the U.S. retail market.

 

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We have reinsured Liberty Mutual for certain losses, including any further adverse loss development on the stop-loss reinsurance agreement with Everest Re Group, Ltd., or Everest, discussed below; any adverse loss development on losses occurring prior to the sale that arise from insurance contracts generated through certain discontinued distribution channels or due to certain loss events; stop-loss protection on losses occurring after the sale and arising from those same distribution channels of up to $95 million, in excess of related premiums and other adjustments; and stop-loss protection on losses occurring prior to the sale and arising from most other business for up to 75% of the first $30 million of adverse loss development recorded through October 31, 2005. The reinsurance covering the losses associated with the discontinued distribution channels will be settled based upon loss experience through December 31, 2008 with a provision that profits on the insurance business from these channels will be shared, with Liberty Mutual receiving up to $20 million of the first $50 million. We believe that we have adequately reserved for the obligations under these reinsurance contracts based on the current information available; however, we may be required to take additional charges in the future that could be material to our results of operations in a particular quarterly or annual period.

 

We have agreed not to compete with the buyers. In New Jersey, the non-compete agreement is effective until the earlier of December 31, 2008 or the termination of our distribution agreement with Palisades Group. Outside of New Jersey, the non-compete agreement is effective until the later of December 31, 2006 or the termination of our distribution agreement with Liberty Mutual.

 

Prudential Securities Capital Markets

 

In the fourth quarter of 2000, we announced a restructuring of Prudential Securities’ activities to implement a fundamental shift in our business strategy. We subsequently exited the lead-managed equity underwriting business for corporate issuers and the institutional fixed income business. As of December 31, 2005 we had remaining assets amounting to $229 million related to Prudential Securities’ institutional fixed income activities.

 

Gibraltar Casualty

 

In September 2000, we sold all of the stock of Gibraltar Casualty Company, a commercial property and casualty insurer that we had placed in wind-down status in 1985, to Everest. As of the date of sale, Gibraltar Casualty’s largest continuing exposures were potential liabilities for asbestos and environmental claims. Upon closing of the sale, a subsidiary of the Company entered into a stop-loss reinsurance agreement with Everest whereby the subsidiary reinsured Everest for up to 80% of the first $200 million of any adverse loss development in excess of Gibraltar Casualty’s carried reserves as of the closing of the sale to Everest. This subsidiary was subsequently sold to Liberty Mutual, as part of the sale discussed above. The $106 million of reserves at the closing date of the sale to Liberty Mutual related to the reinsurance agreement with Everest remained the direct obligation of this subsidiary, and therefore those reserves are no longer included on our balance sheet. As discussed above, we reinsured Liberty Mutual with regard to any further adverse loss development on the stop-loss reinsurance agreement with Everest and recorded a liability for the remaining $54 million of this obligation in 2003 under the reinsurance contracts with Liberty Mutual.

 

Other

 

Prior to May 1996, we conducted substantial residential first mortgage banking and related operations through The Prudential Home Mortgage Company, Inc. and its affiliates. During 1996 and 1997, we sold substantially all of the operations, mortgage loan inventory and loan servicing rights of this business. In 2002, we negotiated a release from future indemnification obligations with Wells Fargo, buyer of the largest portion of the portfolio, related to pre-sale activity. However, we remain liable with respect to certain claims concerning these operations prior to sale. While we believe that we have adequately reserved in all material respects for the remaining liabilities, we may be required to take additional charges in the future that could be material to our results of operations in any particular quarterly or annual period.

 

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Discontinued Operations

 

Discontinued operations reflect the results of the following businesses which qualified for “discontinued operations” accounting treatment under GAAP:

 

    We sold substantially all of the assets and liabilities of our group managed and indemnity healthcare business to Aetna Inc. in 1999.

 

    We discontinued our web-based business for the workplace distribution of voluntary benefits, which included an impairment of our investment in a vendor of the distribution platform, in the third quarter of 2002.

 

    We discontinued certain branches of our international securities operations in the fourth quarter of 2002. In the fourth quarter of 2004 we discontinued the remaining branches of our international securities operations.

 

    We discontinued our retail broker-dealer operations in Tokyo in the fourth quarter of 2002 and subsequently sold these operations in the third quarter of 2003.

 

    We discontinued our specialty automobile insurance business in the first quarter of 2003 and subsequently sold these operations in the third quarter of 2003.

 

    We discontinued our existing consumer banking business in the third quarter of 2003 and subsequently sold these operations in 2004.

 

    We discontinued our work-place distribution property and casualty insurance operations in the fourth quarter of 2003. We subsequently sold these operations in the first quarter of 2004.

 

    We discontinued our Dryden Wealth Management business, which offered financial advisory, private banking and portfolio management services primarily to retail investors in Europe and Asia in the second quarter of 2005. We subsequently sold these operations in the fourth quarter of 2005.

 

Closed Block Business

 

In connection with the demutualization, we ceased offering domestic participating individual life insurance products, under which policyholders are eligible to receive policyholder dividends reflecting experience. The liabilities for our individual in force participating products were segregated, together with assets that will be used exclusively for the payment of benefits and policyholder dividends, expenses and taxes with respect to these products, in the Closed Block. We selected the amount of Closed Block Assets so that the Closed Block Assets initially had a lower book value than the Closed Block Liabilities. We expect that the Closed Block Assets will generate sufficient cash flow, together with anticipated revenues from the Closed Block Policies, over the life of the Closed Block to fund payments of all expenses, taxes, and policyholder benefits to be paid to, and the reasonable dividend expectations of, holders of the Closed Block Policies. We also segregated for accounting purposes the Surplus and Related Assets that we need to hold outside the Closed Block to meet capital requirements related to the policies included within the Closed Block. No policies sold after demutualization will be added to the Closed Block, and its in force business is expected to decline ultimately as we pay policyholder benefits in full. We also expect the proportion of our business represented by the Closed Block to decline as we grow other businesses. For a discussion of the Closed Block Business, see “—Demutualization and Separation of the Businesses—Separation of the Businesses.”

 

Our strategy for the Closed Block Business is to maintain the Closed Block as required by our Plan of Reorganization over the time period of its gradual diminishment as policyholder benefits are paid in full. We are permitted under the Plan of Reorganization, with the prior consent of the New Jersey Commissioner of Banking and Insurance, to enter into agreements to transfer to a third party all or any part of the risks under the Closed Block policies. We have completed the process of arranging reinsurance of the Closed Block. As of December 31, 2005, 90% of the Closed Block had been reinsured, including 17% by a wholly owned subsidiary of Prudential Financial. As discussed in Note 9 to the Consolidated Financial Statements, if the performance of the Closed Block is more favorable than we originally assumed in funding, we will pay the excess to Closed Block policyholders as additional policyholder dividends, and it will not be available to shareholders. See Note 20 to the Consolidated Financial Statements for revenues, income and loss, and total assets of the Closed Block Business.

 

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Intangible and Intellectual Property

 

We use numerous federal, state and foreign servicemarks and trademarks. We believe that the goodwill associated with many of our servicemarks and trademarks, particularly “Prudential®,” “Prudential Financial®,” “Growing and Protecting Your Wealth®” and our “Rock®” logo, are significant competitive assets in the U.S. and certain other markets such as Japan, Korea and Mexico.

 

On April 20, 2004, we entered into a servicemark and trademark agreement with Prudential plc of the United Kingdom, with whom we have no affiliation, concerning the parties’ respective rights worldwide to use the names “Prudential” and “Pru.” The agreement is intended to avoid customer confusion in areas where both companies compete. Under the agreement, there are restrictions on our use of the “Prudential” name and mark in a number of countries outside the Americas, including Europe and parts of Asia. Where these limitations apply, we combine our “Rock” logo with alternative word marks. We believe that these limitations do not materially affect our ability to operate or expand internationally.

 

Ratings

 

Claims-paying and credit ratings are important factors affecting public confidence in an insurer and its competitive position in marketing products. Rating organizations continually review the financial performance and condition of insurers, including Prudential Insurance and our other insurance company subsidiaries. Our credit ratings are also important to our ability to raise capital through the issuance of debt and to the cost of such financing.

 

Claims-paying ratings, which are sometimes referred to as “financial strength” ratings, represent the opinions of rating agencies regarding the financial ability of an insurance company to meet its obligations under an insurance policy. Credit ratings represent the opinions of rating agencies regarding an entity’s ability to repay its indebtedness. The following table summarizes the ratings for Prudential Financial, Inc. and certain of its subsidiaries as of the date of this filing.

 

    

A.M.

Best(1)


   S&P(2)

   Moody’s(3)

  Fitch(4)

Insurance Claims-Paying Ratings:

                  

The Prudential Insurance Company of America

   A+    AA-    Aa3   AA

PRUCO Life Insurance Company

   A+    AA-    Aa3   AA

PRUCO Life Insurance Company of New Jersey

   A+    AA-    NR*   AA

American Skandia Life Assurance Corporation

   A+    AA-    NR   AA

Prudential Retirement Insurance and Annuity Company

   A+    AA-    Aa3   AA

The Prudential Life Insurance Co. Ltd. (Prudential of Japan)

   A+    AA-    NR   NR

Gibraltar Life Insurance Company, Ltd.

   NR    AA-    A1   NR

Credit Ratings:

                  

Prudential Financial, Inc.:

                  

Short-term borrowings

   AMB-1    A-1    P-2   F1

Long-term senior debt

   a-    A    A3   A

Retail notes

   a-    A    A3   NR

The Prudential Insurance Company of America:

                  

Capital and surplus notes

   a    A    A2   A

Prudential Funding, LLC:

                  

Short-term debt

   AMB-1    A-1+    P-1   F1+

Long-term senior debt

   a+    AA-    A1   A+

PRICOA Global Funding I:

                  

Long-term senior debt

   aa-    AA-    Aa3   AA

*   “NR” indicates not rated.
(1)   A.M. Best Company, which we refer to as A.M. Best, claims-paying ratings for insurance companies currently range from “A++ (superior)” to “F (in liquidation).” A.M. Best’s ratings reflect its opinion of an insurance company’s financial strength, operating performance and ability to meet its obligations to policyholders.

 

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    An A.M. Best long-term credit rating is an opinion of the capacity and willingness of an obligor to pay interest and principal in accordance with the terms of the obligation. A.M. Best long-term credit ratings range from “aaa (exceptional)” to “d (in default),” with ratings from “aaa” to “bbb” considered as investment grade. An A.M. Best short-term credit rating reflects an opinion of the issuer’s fundamental credit quality. Ratings range from “AMB-1+,” which represents an exceptional ability to repay short-term debt obligations, to “AMB-4,” which correlates with a speculative (“bb”) long-term rating.
(2)   Standard & Poor’s Rating Services, which we refer to as S&P, claims-paying ratings currently range from “AAA (extremely strong)” to “R (regulatory supervision).” These ratings reflect S&P’s opinion of an operating insurance company’s financial capacity to meet the obligations of its insurance policies in accordance with their terms. A “+” or “-” indicates relative strength within a category.
    An S&P credit rating is a current opinion of the creditworthiness of an obligor with respect to a specific financial obligation, a specific class of financial obligations or a specific financial program. S&P’s long-term issue credit ratings range from “AAA (extremely strong)” to “D (default).” S&P short-term ratings range from “A-1 (highest category)” to “D (default).”
(3)   Moody’s Investors Service, Inc., which we refer to as Moody’s, insurance claims-paying ratings currently range from “Aaa (exceptional)” to “C (lowest).” Moody’s insurance ratings reflect the ability of insurance companies to repay punctually senior policyholder claims and obligations. Numeric modifiers are used to refer to the ranking within the group—with 1 being the highest and 3 being the lowest. However, the financial strength of companies within a generic rating symbol (“Aa” for example) is broadly the same.
    Moody’s credit ratings currently range from “Aaa (highest)” to “C (default).” Moody’s credit ratings grade debt according to its investment quality. Moody’s considers “A1,” “A2” and “A3” rated debt to be upper medium grade obligations, subject to low credit risk. Moody’s short-term ratings are opinions of the ability of issuers to honor senior financial obligations and contracts. Prime ratings range from “Prime-1 (P-1),” which represents a superior ability for repayment of senior short-term debt obligations, to “Prime-3 (P-3),” which represents an acceptable ability for repayment of such obligations. Issuers rated “Not Prime” do not fall within any of the Prime rating categories.
(4)   Fitch Ratings Ltd., which we refer to as Fitch, claims-paying ratings currently range from “AAA (exceptionally strong)” to “D (distressed).” Fitch’s ratings reflect its assessment of the likelihood of timely payment of policyholder and contractholder obligations.
    Fitch long-term credit ratings currently range from “AAA (highest credit quality),” which denotes exceptionally strong capacity for timely payment of financial commitments, to “D (default).” Investment grade ratings range between “AAA” and “BBB.” Short-term ratings range from “F1 (highest credit quality)” to “C (high default risk).” Within long-term and short-term ratings, a “+” or a “–” may be appended to a rating to denote relative status within major rating categories.

 

The ratings set forth above with respect to Prudential Financial, Prudential Funding, LLC, Prudential Insurance and our other insurance and financing subsidiaries reflect current opinions of each rating organization with respect to claims-paying ability, financial strength, operating performance and ability to meet obligations to policyholders or debt holders, as the case may be. These ratings are of concern to policyholders, agents and intermediaries. They are not directed toward shareholders and do not in any way reflect evaluations of the safety and security of the Common Stock. A downgrade in our claims-paying or credit ratings could limit our ability to market products, reduce our competitiveness, increase the number or value of policies being surrendered, increase our borrowing costs and/or hurt our relationships with creditors or trading counterparties. Our claims-paying ratings are an important factor affecting public confidence in most of our products and, as a result, our competitiveness. The interest rates we pay on our borrowings are largely dependent on our credit ratings. Provided below is a discussion of the major rating changes that occurred from the beginning of 2005 through the date of this filing.

 

On March 8, 2005, Moody’s assigned an insurance financial strength rating of “Aa3” to Prudential Retirement Insurance and Annuity Company.

 

On September 15, 2005, Fitch assigned insurance financial strength ratings of “AA-” to Prudential Retirement Insurance and Annuity Company, and “AA-” to PRUCO Life Insurance Company of New Jersey.

 

On February 15, 2006, Standard & Poor’s raised its long-term counterparty credit rating on Prudential Financial to “A” from “A-” and raised its short-term counterparty credit rating on Prudential Financial to “A-1” from “A-2.”

 

On February 16, 2006, Fitch upgraded the insurance financial strength rating of Prudential Insurance, PRUCO Life Insurance Company, PRUCO Life Insurance Company of New Jersey, American Skandia Life Assurance Company, and Prudential Retirement Insurance and Annuity Company to “AA” from “AA-.” It also raised its counterparty credit rating on short-term debt of Prudential Funding, LLC to “F1+” from “F1” and its counterparty credit rating on long-term senior debt of PRICOA Global Funding I to “AA” from “AA-.”

 

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Competition

 

In each of our businesses we face intense competition from domestic and foreign insurance companies, asset managers and diversified financial institutions. Many of our competitors are large and well-capitalized and some have greater market share or breadth of distribution, offer a broader range of products, services or features, assume a greater level of risk, have lower profitability expectations or have higher claims-paying or credit ratings than we do. We compete in our businesses based on a number of factors including brand recognition, reputation, quality of service, quality of investment advice, investment performance of our products, product features, scope of distribution and distribution arrangements, price, perceived financial strength and claims-paying and credit ratings. The relative importance of these factors varies across our products and the markets we serve.

 

In recent years, there has been substantial consolidation among companies in the financial services industry. We expect consolidation to continue and perhaps accelerate. The trend toward consolidation in the financial services industry may result in competitors with increased market shares, or the introduction of larger or financially stronger competitors through acquisitions or otherwise, in lines of business in which we compete.

 

Certain of our products compete on the basis of investment performance. A material decline in the investment performance of these products could have an adverse effect on our sales. Rankings and ratings of investment performance have a significant effect on our ability to increase our assets under management.

 

Competition for personnel in all of our businesses is intense, including our captive sales personnel and our investment managers. In the ordinary course of business, we lose personnel from time to time in whom we have invested significant training. We are directing substantial efforts on improving recruiting and retention and on increasing the productivity of our agents. The loss of key investment managers could have a material adverse effect on our Asset Management segment.

 

Many of our businesses are in industries where access to multiple sales channels may be a competitive advantage. We believe that insurance and investment products will continue to be sold primarily through face-to-face sales channels, although customers’ desire for objective and not product-related advice will, over time, increase the amount of insurance and investment products sold through non-affiliated distributors such as independent agents, insurance brokers and investment advisors. In addition, we expect that insurance and investment products will increasingly be sold through direct marketing, including through electronic commerce.

 

The proliferation and growth of non-affiliated distribution channels puts pressure on our captive sales channels to either increase their productivity or reduce their costs in order to remain competitive. We continue our efforts to strengthen and broaden our sales channels, but we cannot assure they will be successful. We run the risk that the marketplace will make a more significant or rapid shift to non-affiliated or direct distribution alternatives than we anticipate or are able to achieve ourselves. If this happens, our market share and results of operations could be adversely affected.

 

Our ability to sell traditional guaranteed products depends significantly on our claims-paying ratings. A downgrade in our claims-paying ratings could adversely affect our ability to sell our insurance products and reduce our profitability.

 

Our international life insurance business, other than Gibraltar Life, competes by focusing on a limited market using our Life Planner model to offer high quality service and needs-based protection products. Certain competitors, including Sony Life in Japan, employ or seek to employ versions of the Life Planner model. Others have copied some features of the Life Planner model and have targeted our Life Planners for recruitment. The success of our model in some markets makes us vulnerable to imitation and targeted recruitment of our sales force. Competition for personnel in all of our businesses is intense, including for Prudential Agents, Life Planners and Life Advisors, other captive sales personnel, desirable non-affiliated distribution channels and our investment managers.

 

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Regulation

 

Overview

 

Our businesses are subject to comprehensive regulation and supervision. The purpose of these regulations is primarily to protect our customers and not our shareholders. Many of the laws and regulations to which we are subject are regularly re-examined, and existing or future laws and regulations may become more restrictive or otherwise adversely affect our operations. U.S. law and regulation of our international business, particularly as it relates to monitoring customer activities, is likely to increase as a result of terrorist activity in the U.S. and abroad and may affect our ability to attract and retain customers.

 

Our international operations face political, legal, operational and other risks that we do not face in our U.S. operations, including the risk of discriminatory regulation, labor issues in connection with workers’ associations and trade unions, nationalization or expropriation of assets, price controls and exchange controls or other restrictions that prevent us from transferring funds from these operations out of the countries in which they operate or converting local currencies we hold into U.S. dollars or other currencies.

 

The discussion below is primarily focused on applicable U.S. regulation. Our international operations are subject to similar types of regulation in the jurisdictions in which they operate. In particular, it is becoming increasingly common for regulatory developments in the U.S. to be studied and adopted in some form in other jurisdictions in which we do business. In some instances, such jurisdictions may also impose different or more rigorous laws and requirements, including regulations governing consumer privacy protection, employee protection, corporate governance and capital adequacy.

 

Insurance Operations

 

State insurance laws regulate all aspects of our domestic insurance businesses, and state insurance departments in the fifty states, the District of Columbia and various U.S. territories and possessions monitor our insurance operations. Prudential Insurance is domiciled in New Jersey and its principal insurance regulatory authority is the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance. Our other U.S. insurance companies are principally regulated by the insurance departments of the states in which they are domiciled. Our international insurance operations are principally regulated by non-U.S. insurance regulatory authorities in the jurisdictions in which they operate, including the Japanese Ministry of Finance and Financial Services Agency. Generally, our insurance products must be approved by the insurance regulators in the state in which they are sold. Our insurance products are substantially affected by federal, state and non-U.S. tax laws. Products in the U.S. that also constitute “securities,” such as variable life insurance and variable annuities, are also subject to federal and state securities laws and regulations. The Securities and Exchange Commission, or the SEC, the National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc., or the NASD, the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board, state securities commissions and non-U.S. authorities for products offered outside the U.S. regulate and supervise these products.

 

Investment Products and Asset Management Operations

 

Our investment products and services are subject to federal, state and non-U.S. securities, fiduciary, including the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or ERISA, and other laws and regulations. The SEC, the NASD, state securities commissions, state insurance departments and the United States Department of Labor are the principal regulators that regulate our asset management operations. Outside of the U.S., regulators of these activities include the Korean Ministry of Finance and Economy, or MOFE, and the Financial Supervisory Commission, or FSC. Federal, state and non-U.S. tax laws also substantially affect our investment products and services.

 

Securities Operations

 

Our securities operations, principally conducted by a number of SEC-registered broker-dealers and non-U.S. broker-dealers, are subject to federal, state and non-U.S. securities, commodities and related laws. The SEC, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or the CFTC, state securities authorities, the New York Stock Exchange, or the NYSE, the NASD and similar U.S. and non-U.S. authorities, such as the United Kingdom’s Financial Services Authority, or FSA, are the principal regulators of our securities operations.

 

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Regulation Affecting Prudential Financial

 

Prudential Financial is the holding company for all of our operations. Prudential Financial itself is not licensed as an insurer, investment advisor, broker-dealer, bank or other regulated entity. However, because it owns regulated entities, Prudential Financial is subject to regulation as an insurance holding company and, as discussed under “—Other Businesses” below, a savings and loan holding company. As a company with publicly traded securities, Prudential Financial is subject to legal and regulatory requirements applicable generally to public companies, including the rules and regulations of the SEC and the NYSE relating to public reporting and disclosure, securities trading, accounting and financial reporting, and corporate governance matters. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and rules and regulations adopted in furtherance of that Act have substantially increased the requirements in these and other areas for public companies such as Prudential Financial.

 

The European Union has adopted a directive, to be enacted by its member states, that will subject financial groups operating within the European Union, including their operations outside the European Union, to broad capital adequacy and other regulatory requirements. The application of this directive to Prudential Financial, in particular whether it will result in new solvency oversight, is presently uncertain.

 

Insurance Holding Company Regulation

 

Prudential Financial is subject to the insurance holding company laws in the states where our insurance subsidiaries are, or are treated as, domiciled, which currently include New Jersey, Arizona, Connecticut and Indiana. These laws generally require each insurance company directly or indirectly owned by the holding company to register with the insurance department in the insurance company’s state of domicile and to furnish annually financial and other information about the operations of companies within the holding company system. Generally, all transactions affecting the insurers in the holding company system must be fair and at arm’s length and, if material, require prior notice and approval or non-disapproval by the state’s insurance department.

 

Most states, including the states in which our U.S. insurance companies are domiciled, have insurance laws that require regulatory approval of a direct or indirect change of control of an insurer or an insurer’s holding company. Laws such as these that apply to us prevent any person from acquiring control of Prudential Financial or of our insurance subsidiaries unless that person has filed a statement with specified information with the insurance regulators and has obtained their prior approval. Under most states’ statutes, acquiring 10% or more of the voting stock of an insurance company or its parent company is presumptively considered a change of control, although such presumption may be rebutted. Accordingly, any person who acquires 10% or more of the voting securities of Prudential Financial without the prior approval of the insurance regulators of the states in which our U.S. insurance companies are domiciled will be in violation of these states’ laws and may be subject to injunctive action requiring the disposition or seizure of those securities by the relevant insurance regulator or prohibiting the voting of those securities and to other actions determined by the relevant insurance regulator.

 

In addition, many state insurance laws require prior notification of state insurance departments of a change in control of a non-domiciliary insurance company doing business in that state. While these prenotification statutes do not authorize the state insurance departments to disapprove the change in control, they authorize regulatory action in the affected state if particular conditions exist such as undue market concentration. Any future transactions that would constitute a change in control of Prudential Financial may require prior notification in those states that have adopted preacquisition notification laws.

 

These laws may discourage potential acquisition proposals and may delay, deter or prevent a change of control of Prudential Financial, including through transactions, and in particular unsolicited transactions, that some shareholders of Prudential Financial might consider desirable.

 

Insurance Operations

 

State Insurance Regulation

 

State insurance authorities have broad administrative powers with respect to all aspects of the insurance business including:

 

    licensing to transact business,

 

    licensing agents,

 

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    admittance of assets to statutory surplus,

 

    regulating premium rates for certain insurance products,

 

    approving policy forms,

 

    regulating unfair trade and claims practices,

 

    establishing reserve requirements and solvency standards,

 

    fixing maximum interest rates on life insurance policy loans and minimum accumulation or surrender values, and

 

    regulating the type, amounts and valuations of investments permitted and other matters.

 

State insurance laws and regulations require our insurance companies to file financial statements with insurance departments everywhere they do business, and the operations of our insurance companies and accounts are subject to examination by those departments at any time. Our insurance companies prepare statutory financial statements in accordance with accounting practices and procedures prescribed or permitted by these departments. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners, or the NAIC, has approved a series of statutory accounting principles that have been adopted, in some cases with minor modifications, by all state insurance departments.

 

State insurance departments conduct periodic examinations of the books and records, financial reporting, policy filings and market conduct of insurance companies domiciled in their states, generally once every three to five years. Examinations are generally carried out in cooperation with the insurance departments of other states under guidelines promulgated by the NAIC. The New Jersey insurance regulator completed a financial examination of Prudential Insurance and its indirect insurance subsidiary, PRUCO Life Insurance Company of New Jersey, for each of the previous five years for the period ended December 31, 2001, and found no material deficiencies.

 

Financial Regulation

 

Dividend Payment Limitations.    The New Jersey insurance law and the insurance laws of the other states and countries in which our insurance companies are domiciled regulate the amount of dividends that may be paid by Prudential Insurance and our other insurance companies. See “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Liquidity and Capital Resources” for more detail.

 

Risk-Based Capital.    In order to enhance the regulation of insurers’ solvency, the NAIC adopted a model law to implement risk-based capital requirements for life, health and property and casualty insurance companies. All states have adopted the NAIC’s model law or a substantially similar law. The risk-based capital, or RBC, calculation, which regulators use to assess the sufficiency of an insurer’s capital, measures the risk characteristics of a company’s assets, liabilities and certain off-balance sheet items. RBC is calculated by applying factors to various asset, premium and liability items. Within a given risk category, these factors are higher for those items with greater underlying risk and lower for items with lower underlying risk. Insurers that have less statutory capital than the RBC calculation requires are considered to have inadequate capital and are subject to varying degrees of regulatory action depending upon the level of capital inadequacy. The RBC ratios for each of our U.S. insurance companies currently are well above the ranges that would require any regulatory or corrective action.

 

Changes in statutory capital requirements for our variable annuity products under an NAIC initiative known as “C-3 Phase II” became effective as of December 31, 2005. These changes did not have a material impact on the RBC ratios of our insurance subsidiaries or the capital requirements associated with our variable annuity products given our internal reinsurance program, our living benefit hedge program and other product risk management policies and procedures.

 

IRIS Tests.    The NAIC has developed a set of financial relationships or tests known as the Insurance Regulatory Information System, or IRIS, to assist state regulators in monitoring the financial condition of U.S. insurance companies and identifying companies that require special attention or action by insurance regulatory authorities. Insurance companies generally submit data annually to the NAIC, which in turn analyzes the data

 

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using prescribed financial data ratios, each with defined “usual ranges.” Generally, regulators will begin to investigate or monitor an insurance company if its ratios fall outside the usual ranges for four or more of the ratios. If an insurance company has insufficient capital, regulators may act to reduce the amount of insurance it can issue. None of our U.S. insurance companies is currently subject to regulatory scrutiny based on these ratios.

 

Insurance Reserves.    State insurance laws require us to analyze the adequacy of our reserves annually. Our actuary must submit an opinion that our reserves, when considered in light of the assets we hold with respect to those reserves, make adequate provision for our contractual obligations and related expenses.

 

Market Conduct Regulation

 

State insurance laws and regulations include numerous provisions governing the marketplace activities of insurers, including provisions governing the form and content of disclosure to consumers, illustrations, advertising, sales practices and complaint handling. State regulatory authorities generally enforce these provisions through periodic market conduct examinations.

 

Insurance Guaranty Association Assessments

 

Each state has insurance guaranty association laws under which insurers doing business in the state are members and may be assessed by state insurance guaranty associations for certain obligations of insolvent insurance companies to policyholders and claimants. Typically, states assess each member insurer in an amount related to the member insurer’s proportionate share of the business written by all member insurers in the state. For the years ended December 31, 2005, 2004, and 2003, we paid approximately $0.7 million, $0.8 million and $1.2 million, respectively, in assessments pursuant to state insurance guaranty association laws. While we cannot predict the amount and timing of any future assessments on our U.S. insurance companies under these laws, we have established reserves that we believe are adequate for assessments relating to insurance companies that are currently subject to insolvency proceedings.

 

State Securities Regulation

 

Our mutual funds, and in certain states our variable life insurance and variable annuity products, are “securities” within the meaning of state securities laws. As such, these products are subject to filing and certain other requirements. Also, sales activities with respect to these products generally are subject to state securities regulation. Such regulation may affect investment advice, sales and related activities for these products.

 

Federal Regulation

 

Our variable life insurance products, as well as our variable annuity and mutual fund products, generally are “securities” within the meaning of federal securities laws, registered under the federal securities laws and subject to regulation by the SEC and the NASD. Federal and some state securities regulation similar to that discussed below under “—Investment Products and Asset Management Operations” and “—Securities Operations” affect investment advice, sales and related activities with respect to these products. In addition, although the federal government does not comprehensively regulate the business of insurance, federal legislation and administrative policies in several areas, including taxation, financial services regulation and pension and welfare benefits regulation, can significantly affect the insurance industry. Congress also periodically considers and is considering laws affecting privacy of information and genetic testing that could significantly and adversely affect the insurance industry.

 

Tax Legislation

 

Current U.S. federal income tax laws generally permit certain holders to defer taxation on the build-up of value of annuities and life insurance products until payments are actually made to the policyholder or other beneficiary and to exclude from taxation the build-up of value which is paid as a death benefit under a life insurance contract. Congress from time to time considers legislation that could make our products less attractive to consumers, including legislation that would reduce or eliminate the benefit of this deferral on some annuities and insurance products, as well as other types of changes that could reduce or eliminate the attractiveness of annuities and life insurance products to consumers, such as repeal of the estate tax.

 

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In June 2001, the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 was enacted. The 2001 Act contains provisions that will, over time, significantly lower individual tax rates. This will have the effect of reducing the benefits of tax deferral on the build-up of value of annuities and life insurance products. The 2001 Act also includes provisions that will eliminate, over time, the estate, gift and generation-skipping taxes and partially eliminates the step-up in basis rule applicable to property held in a decedent’s estate. Some of these changes might hinder our sales and result in the increased surrender of insurance and annuity products.

 

In May 2003, the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 was enacted. Individual taxpayers are the principal beneficiaries of the 2003 Act, which includes an acceleration of certain of the income tax rate reductions enacted originally under the 2001 Act, as well as capital gains and dividend tax rate reductions. Although most of these rate reductions expire after 2008 or later, these reductions have the effect of reducing the benefits of tax deferral on the build-up of value of annuities and life insurance products. These changes may hinder our sales and result in increased surrender of insurance and annuity products.

 

In October of 2004, the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 was signed into law. The 2004 Act contains a provision that subjected the repatriation of foreign earnings to a reduced tax rate under certain circumstances through the end of 2005. During 2005, we repatriated earnings of approximately $160 million from foreign operations under the 2004 Act, for which we recorded income tax expense of $9 million.

 

Proposed changes to the Social Security program would allow a portion of an individual’s Social Security contributions to be privately invested. If enacted, depending on the form of the legislation, these changes could affect sales of some of our products. The Bush Administration also continues to propose that many of the rate reductions described above be made permanent, as well as to propose several tax-favored savings initiatives that, if enacted by Congress, could also adversely affect the sale of our annuity, life and tax-qualified retirement products and result in the increased surrender of these products.

 

In November 2005, the Presidential Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform released its report entitled Simple, Fair and Pro-Growth: Proposals to Fix America’s Tax System (the “Proposal”). The Proposal recommends two alternatives for reform. If either alternative were enacted in a form similar to that proposed, there could be substantial negative implications to our products, as well as to how our profits are taxed. At this point the Proposal is a recommendation and is not proposed legislation.

 

ERISA

 

ERISA is a comprehensive federal statute that applies to U.S. employee benefit plans sponsored by private employers and labor unions. Plans subject to ERISA include pension and profit sharing plans and welfare plans, including health, life and disability plans. ERISA provisions include reporting and disclosure rules, standards of conduct that apply to plan fiduciaries and prohibitions on transactions known as “prohibited transactions,” such as conflict-of-interest transactions and certain transactions between a benefit plan and a party in interest. ERISA also provides for a scheme of civil and criminal penalties and enforcement. Our insurance, asset management, plan administrative services and other businesses provide services to employee benefit plans subject to ERISA, including services where we may act as an ERISA fiduciary. In addition to ERISA regulation of businesses providing products and services to ERISA plans, we become subject to ERISA’s prohibited transaction rules for transactions with those plans, which may affect our ability to enter transactions, or the terms on which transactions may be entered, with those plans, even in businesses unrelated to those giving rise to party in interest status.

 

USA Patriot Act

 

The USA Patriot Act of 2001, enacted in response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, contains anti-money laundering and financial transparency laws and mandates the implementation of various new regulations applicable to broker-dealers and other financial services companies, including insurance companies. The Patriot Act seeks to promote cooperation among financial institutions, regulators and law enforcement entities in identifying parties that may be involved in terrorism or money laundering. Anti-money laundering laws outside of the U.S. contain some similar provisions. The increased obligations of financial institutions to identify their customers, watch for and report suspicious transactions, respond to requests for information by regulatory authorities and law enforcement agencies, and share information with other financial institutions require the implementation and maintenance of internal practices, procedures and controls.

 

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Investment Products and Asset Management Operations

 

Some of the separate account, mutual fund and other pooled investment products offered by our businesses, in addition to being registered under the Securities Act, are registered as investment companies under the Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended, and the shares of certain of these entities are qualified for sale in some states and the District of Columbia. Separate account investment products are also subject to state insurance regulation as described above. We also have several subsidiaries that are registered as broker-dealers under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, or the Exchange Act, and are subject to federal and state regulation, including but not limited to the SEC’s Uniform Net Capital Rule, described under “—Securities Operations” below. In addition, we have several subsidiaries that are investment advisors registered under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, as amended. Our Prudential Agents and other employees, insofar as they sell products that are securities, are subject to the Exchange Act and to examination requirements and regulation by the SEC, the NASD and state securities commissioners. Regulation also extends to various Prudential entities that employ or control those individuals. The federal securities laws could also require reapproval by customers of our investment advisory contracts to manage mutual funds, including mutual funds included in annuity products, upon a change in control.

 

Federal and state regulators are devoting substantial attention to the mutual fund and variable annuity businesses. As a result of publicity relating to widespread perceptions of industry abuses, numerous legislative and regulatory reforms have been proposed or adopted with respect to mutual fund governance, disclosure requirements concerning mutual fund share classes, commission breakpoints, revenue sharing, advisory fees, market timing, late trading, portfolio pricing, annuity products, hedge funds and other issues. It is difficult to predict at this time whether changes resulting from new laws and regulations will affect our investment product offerings or asset management operations and, if so, to what degree.

 

Congress from time to time considers pension reform legislation that could make certain of our retirement products and services less attractive to retirement plan sponsors and administrators. For example, current proposals concerning pension funding obligations could significantly increase the costs associated with maintaining defined benefit pension plans. These changes could hinder sales of defined benefit plan products and services and cause plan sponsors to discontinue existing defined benefit plans for which we provide asset management or administrative services. The Bush Administration also continues to propose several tax-favored savings initiatives. These initiatives could hinder sales and persistency of our products and services that support employment based retirement plans.

 

For a discussion of potential federal tax legislation and other federal regulation affecting our variable annuity products, see “—Insurance Operations—Federal Regulation” above.

 

Securities Operations

 

A number of our subsidiaries and Wachovia Securities, in which we have a 38% ownership interest, are registered as broker-dealers with the SEC and with some or all of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. In addition, a number of our subsidiaries are also registered as investment advisors with the SEC. Our broker-dealer affiliates are members of, and are subject to regulation by “self-regulatory organizations,” including the NASD and the NYSE. Many of these self-regulatory organizations conduct examinations of and have adopted rules governing their member broker-dealers. In addition, state securities and certain other regulators have regulatory and oversight authority over our registered broker-dealers.

 

Broker-dealers and their sales forces in the U.S. and in certain other jurisdictions are subject to regulations that cover many aspects of the securities business, including sales methods and trading practices. The regulations cover the suitability of investments for individual customers, use and safekeeping of customers’ funds and securities, capital adequacy, recordkeeping, financial reporting and the conduct of directors, officers and employees.

 

The commodity futures and commodity options industry in the U.S. is subject to regulation under the Commodity Exchange Act, as amended. The CFTC is the federal agency charged with the administration of the Commodity Exchange Act and the regulations adopted under that Act. A number of our subsidiaries are

 

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registered with the CFTC as futures commission merchants, commodity pool operators or commodity trading advisors. Our futures business is also regulated in the U.S. by the National Futures Association and in the United Kingdom by the FSA.

 

The SEC and other governmental agencies and self-regulatory organizations, as well as state securities commissions in the U.S., have the power to conduct administrative proceedings that can result in censure, fine, the issuance of cease-and-desist orders or suspension, termination or limitation of the activities of a broker-dealer or an investment advisor or its employees.

 

As registered broker-dealers and members of various self-regulatory organizations, our U.S. registered broker-dealer subsidiaries and Wachovia Securities are subject to the SEC’s Uniform Net Capital Rule. The Uniform Net Capital Rule sets the minimum level of net capital a broker-dealer must maintain and also requires that at least a minimum part of a broker-dealer’s assets be kept in relatively liquid form. These net capital requirements are designed to measure the financial soundness and liquidity of broker-dealers. Our broker-dealers are also subject to the net capital requirements of the CFTC and the various securities and commodities exchanges of which they are members. Compliance with the net capital requirements could limit those operations that require the intensive use of capital, such as underwriting and trading activities, and may limit the ability of these subsidiaries to pay dividends to Prudential Financial.

 

Other Businesses

 

As a result of its ownership of Prudential Bank & Trust, FSB, Prudential Financial and Prudential IBH Holdco, Inc. are considered to be savings and loan holding companies and are subject to annual examination by the Office of Thrift Supervision of the U.S. Department of Treasury. Federal and state banking laws generally provide that no person may acquire control of Prudential Financial, and gain indirect control of Prudential Bank & Trust, FSB or Prudential Trust Company, without prior regulatory approval. Generally, beneficial ownership of 10% or more of the voting securities of Prudential Financial would be presumed to constitute control.

 

Our domestic banking operations are subject to federal and state regulation. Prudential provides trust services through the Prudential Trust Company, a state-chartered trust company incorporated under the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and both trust directed services and investment products through Prudential Bank & Trust, FSB. The sale of real estate franchises by our real estate brokerage franchise operation is regulated by various state laws and the Federal Trade Commission. The federal Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act and state real estate brokerage and unfair trade practice laws regulate payments among participants in the sale or financing of residences or the provision of settlement services such as mortgages, homeowner’s insurance and title insurance.

 

Privacy Regulation

 

Federal and state law and regulation require financial institutions to protect the security and confidentiality of health-related and customer information and to notify customers and other individuals about their policies and practices relating to their collection and disclosure of health-related and customer information and their policies relating to protecting the security and confidentiality of that information. State laws regulate collection, use and disclosure of social security numbers. Federal and state laws and regulations regulate the ability of financial institutions to make telemarketing calls and to send unsolicited e-mail messages to consumers and customers. Federal and state governments and regulatory bodies may be expected to consider additional or more detailed regulation regarding these subjects and the privacy and security of personal information. Our non-U.S. business operations are also subject to consumer and employee privacy laws and regulations, which in some cases may be different from or more rigorous than those applicable to our U.S. business operations.

 

Environmental Considerations

 

Federal, state and local environmental laws and regulations apply to our ownership and operation of real property. Inherent in owning and operating real property are the risk of hidden environmental liabilities and the

 

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costs of any required clean-up. Under the laws of certain states, contamination of a property may give rise to a lien on the property to secure recovery of the costs of clean-up, which could adversely affect our commercial mortgage lending business. In several states, this lien has priority over the lien of an existing mortgage against such property. In addition, in some states and under the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980, or CERCLA, we may be liable, as an “owner” or “operator,” for costs of cleaning-up releases or threatened releases of hazardous substances at a property mortgaged to us. We also risk environmental liability when we foreclose on a property mortgaged to us. Federal legislation provides for a safe harbor from CERCLA liability for secured lenders that foreclose and sell the mortgaged real estate, provided that certain requirements are met. However, there are circumstances in which actions taken could still expose us to CERCLA liability. Application of various other federal and state environmental laws could also result in the imposition of liability on us for costs associated with environmental hazards.

 

We routinely conduct environmental assessments for real estate we acquire for investment and before taking title through foreclosure to real property collateralizing mortgages that we hold. Although unexpected environmental liabilities can always arise, based on these environmental assessments and compliance with our internal procedures, we believe that any costs associated with compliance with environmental laws and regulations or any clean-up of properties would not have a material adverse effect on our results of operations.

 

Employees

 

As of December 31, 2005, we had 38,853 employees. We believe our relations with our employees are satisfactory.

 

Prudential Insurance and the Office of Professional Employees International Union, Local 153 (AFL-CIO), are parties to a collective bargaining agreement covering approximately 500 Prudential Agents.

 

Available Information

 

Prudential Financial files periodic reports, proxy statements and other information with the SEC. Such reports, proxy statements and other information may be obtained by visiting the Public Reference Room of the SEC at 450 Fifth Street, N.W., Washington D.C. 20549 or by calling the SEC at 1-800-SEC-0330. In addition, the SEC maintains an internet website (www.sec.gov) that contains reports, proxy statements, and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC, including Prudential Financial.

 

You may also access our press releases, financial information and reports filed with the SEC (for example, our Annual Report on Form 10-K, our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and our Current Reports on Form 8-K and any amendments to those Forms) online at www.investor.prudential.com. Copies of any documents on our website are available without charge, and reports filed with or furnished to the SEC will be available as soon as reasonably practicable after they are filed with or furnished to the SEC. The information found on our website is not part of this or any other report filed with or furnished to the SEC.

 

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ITEM 1A.    RISK FACTORS

 

You should carefully consider the following risks. These risks could materially affect our business, results of operations or financial condition, cause the trading price of our Common Stock to decline materially or cause our actual results to differ materially from those expected or those expressed in any forward looking statements made by or on behalf of the Company. These risks are not exclusive, and additional risks to which we are subject include, but are not limited to, the factors mentioned under “Forward-Looking Statements” above and the risks of our businesses described elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

 

Market fluctuations and general economic, market and political conditions may adversely affect our business and profitability.

 

Our insurance products and certain of our investment products, and our investment returns, are sensitive to stock, real estate and other market fluctuations and general economic, market and political conditions and these fluctuations and changes could adversely affect our investment returns and results of operations, including in the following respects:

 

    The profitability of many of our insurance products depends in part on the value of the separate accounts supporting these products, which may fluctuate substantially depending on the foregoing conditions.

 

    Market conditions resulting in reductions in the value of assets we manage would have an adverse effect on the revenues and profitability of our asset management services, which depend on fees related primarily to the value of assets under management, and would decrease the value of our proprietary investments.

 

    A change in market conditions, including prolonged periods of high inflation, could cause a change in consumer sentiment adversely affecting sales and persistency of our long-term savings and protection products.

 

    Sales of our investment-based and asset management products and services may decline and lapses of variable life and annuity products and withdrawals of assets from other investment products may increase if a market downturn, increased market volatility or other market conditions result in customers becoming dissatisfied with their investments or products.

 

    A market decline could result in guaranteed minimum benefits contained in many of our variable annuity products being higher than current account values or our pricing assumptions would support, requiring us to materially increase reserves for such products.

 

    Market conditions beyond our control determine the availability and cost of the reinsurance protection we purchase. Accordingly, we may be forced to incur additional expenses for reinsurance or may not be able to obtain sufficient reinsurance on acceptable terms which could adversely affect the profitability of future business or our willingness to write future business.

 

Interest rate fluctuations could adversely affect our businesses and profitability.

 

Our insurance products and certain of our investment products, and our investment returns, are sensitive to interest rate fluctuations, and changes in interest rates could adversely affect our investment returns and results of operations, including in the following respects:

 

    Some of our products expose us to the risk that changes in interest rates will reduce the spread between the amounts that we are required to pay under the contracts and the rate of return we are able to earn on our general account investments supporting the contracts. When interest rates decline, we have to reinvest the cash income from our investments in lower yielding instruments. Since many of our policies and contracts have guaranteed minimum interest or crediting rates or limit the resetting of interest rates, the spreads could decrease and potentially become negative. When interest rates rise, we may not be able to replace the assets in our general account with the higher yielding assets needed to fund the higher crediting rates necessary to keep these products and contracts competitive.

 

    Changes in interest rates may reduce our spreads or result in potential losses in our investment activities in which we borrow funds and purchase investments to earn additional spread income on the borrowed funds. A decline in market interest rates could also reduce our returns from investment of equity.

 

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    When interest rates rise, policy loans and surrenders and withdrawals of life insurance policies and annuity contracts may increase as policyholders seek to buy products with perceived higher returns, requiring us to sell investment assets potentially resulting in realized investment losses, or requiring us to accelerate the amortization of DAC or VOBA (both defined below).

 

    A decline in interest rates accompanied by unexpected prepayments of certain investments could result in reduced investments and a decline in our profitability. An increase in interest rates accompanied by unexpected extensions of certain lower yielding investments could result in a decline in our profitability.

 

    Changes in the relationship between long-term and short-term interest rates could adversely affect the profitability of some of our products.

 

If our reserves for future policyholder benefits and claims are inadequate, we may be required to increase our reserves, which would adversely affect our results of operations and financial condition.

 

We establish and carry reserves to pay future policyholder benefits and claims. Our reserves do not represent an exact calculation of liability, but rather are actuarial or statistical estimates based on many assumptions and projections which are inherently uncertain and involve the exercise of significant judgment, including as to the levels of and/or timing of receipt or payment of premiums, benefits, claims, expenses, interest credits, investment results, retirement, mortality, morbidity and persistency. We cannot determine with precision the ultimate amounts that we will pay for, or the timing of payment of, actual benefits, claims and expenses or whether the assets supporting our policy liabilities, together with future premiums, will be sufficient for payment of benefits and claims. If we conclude that our reserves, together with future premiums, are insufficient to cover future policy benefits and claims, we would be required to increase our reserves and incur income statement charges for the period in which we make the determination, which would adversely affect our results of operations and financial condition.

 

Our profitability may decline if mortality rates, morbidity rates or persistency rates differ significantly from our pricing expectations.

 

We set prices for many of our insurance and annuity products based upon expected claims and payment patterns, using assumptions for mortality rates, or likelihood of death, and morbidity rates, or likelihood of sickness, of our policyholders. Pricing of our insurance and deferred annuity products are also based in part upon expected persistency of these products, which is the probability that a policy or contract will remain in force from one period to the next. The development of a secondary market for life insurance, including life settlements or “viaticals” and investor owned life insurance, could adversely affect the profitability of existing business and our pricing assumptions for new business. Significant deviations in actual experience from our pricing assumptions could have an adverse effect on the profitability of our products. Although some of our products permit us to increase premiums or adjust other charges and credits during the life of the policy or contract, the adjustments permitted under the terms of the policies or contracts may not be sufficient to maintain profitability. Many of our products do not permit us to increase premiums or adjust other charges and credits or limit those adjustments during the life of the policy or contract.

 

We may be required to accelerate the amortization of deferred policy acquisition costs, or DAC, or valuation of business acquired, or VOBA, or recognize impairment in the value of our goodwill, which could adversely affect our results of operations or financial condition.

 

Deferred policy acquisition costs, or DAC, represent the costs that vary with and are related primarily to the acquisition of new and renewal insurance and annuity contracts, and we amortize these costs over the expected lives of the contracts. Valuation of business acquired, or VOBA, represents the present value of future profits embedded in acquired insurance, annuity and investment-type contracts and is amortized over the expected effective lives of the acquired contracts. Goodwill represents the excess of the amounts we paid to acquire subsidiaries and other businesses over the fair value of their net assets at the date of acquisition. Management, on an ongoing basis, tests the DAC and VOBA recorded on our balance sheet to determine if these amounts are recoverable under current assumptions. In addition, we regularly review the estimates and assumptions underlying DAC and VOBA for those products for which we amortize DAC and VOBA in proportion to gross profits or gross margins. Management tests goodwill for impairment at least annually based upon estimates of the

 

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fair value of the reporting unit to which the goodwill relates. Given changes in facts and circumstances, these tests and reviews could lead to reductions in goodwill, DAC and/or VOBA that could have an adverse effect on the results of our operations and our financial condition.

 

A downgrade or potential downgrade in our claims-paying or credit ratings could limit our ability to market products, increase the number or value of policies being surrendered, increase our borrowing costs and/or hurt our relationships with creditors or trading counterparties.

 

Claims-paying ratings, which are sometimes referred to as “financial strength” ratings, represent the opinions of rating agencies regarding the financial ability of an insurance company to meet its obligations under an insurance policy, and are important factors affecting public confidence in an insurer and its competitive position in marketing products, including Prudential Insurance and our other insurance company subsidiaries. Credit ratings represent the opinions of rating agencies regarding an entity’s ability to repay its indebtedness, and Prudential Financial’s credit ratings are important to our ability to raise capital through the issuance of debt and to the cost of such financing. A downgrade in our claims-paying or credit ratings could limit our ability to market products, reduce our competitiveness, increase the number or value of policies being surrendered, increase our borrowing costs and/or hurt our relationships with creditors or trading counterparties.

 

Losses due to defaults by others, including issuers of investment securities or reinsurance and derivative instrument counterparties, could adversely affect the value of our investments or reduce our profitability.

 

Issuers and borrowers whose securities or loans we hold, customers, trading counterparties, counterparties under swaps and other derivative contracts, reinsurers, clearing agents, exchanges, clearing houses and other financial intermediaries and guarantors may default on their obligations to us due to bankruptcy, insolvency, lack of liquidity, adverse economic conditions, operational failure, fraud or other reasons. Such defaults could have an adverse effect on our results of operations and financial condition.

 

Intense competition could adversely affect our ability to maintain or increase our market share or profitability.

 

In each of our businesses we face intense competition from domestic and foreign insurance companies, asset managers and diversified financial institutions, both for the ultimate customers for our products and, in many businesses, for distribution through non-affiliated distribution channels. We compete based on a number of factors including brand recognition, reputation, quality of service, quality of investment advice, investment performance of our products, product features, scope of distribution and distribution arrangements, price, perceived financial strength and claims-paying and credit ratings. A decline in our competitive position as to one or more of these factors could adversely affect our profitability and assets under management. Many of our competitors are large and well capitalized and some have greater market share or breadth of distribution, offer a broader range of products, services or features, assume a greater level of risk, have lower profitability expectations or have higher claims-paying or credit ratings than we do. The proliferation and growth of non-affiliated distribution channels puts pressure on our captive sales channels to either increase their productivity or reduce their costs in order to remain competitive, and we run the risk that the marketplace will make a more significant or rapid shift to non-affiliated or direct distribution alternatives than we anticipate or are able to achieve ourselves, potentially adversely affecting our market share and results of operations. Competition for personnel in all of our businesses is intense, including for Prudential Agents, Life Planners and Life Advisors, other face-to-face sales personnel, desirable non-affiliated distribution channels and our investment managers. The loss of personnel could have an adverse effect on our business and profitability.

 

Changes in U.S. federal income tax law or in the income tax laws of other jurisdictions in which we operate could make some of our products less attractive to consumers and increase our tax costs.

 

Current U.S. federal income tax laws generally permit holders to defer taxation on the build-up of value of annuities and life insurance products until payments are actually made to the policyholder or other beneficiary and to exclude from taxation the build-up of value which is paid as a death benefit under a life insurance contract. Congress from time to time considers legislation that could make our products less attractive to

 

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consumers, including legislation that would reduce or eliminate the benefit of this deferral on some annuities and insurance products, as well as other types of changes that could reduce or eliminate the attractiveness of annuities and life insurance products to consumers, such as repeal of the estate tax.

 

For example, the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 generally provide for lower income tax, capital gains and dividend tax rates that might have the effect of reducing the benefits of tax deferral on the build-up of value of annuities and life insurance products. The Bush Administration continues to propose that many of the rate reductions pursuant to these Acts be made permanent as well as to propose several tax-favored savings initiatives. Proposed changes to the Social Security program would allow a portion of an individual’s Social Security contributions to be privately invested which, if enacted, could affect sales of some of our products. These changes or other tax law changes might hinder our sales and result in the increased surrender of insurance and annuity products.

 

Congress, as well as foreign, state and local governments, also considers from time to time legislation that could increase our tax costs. If such legislation is adopted, our consolidated net income could decline.

 

We have substantial international operations and our international operations face political, legal, operational and other risks that could adversely affect those operations or our profitability.

 

A substantial portion of our revenues and income from continuing operations is derived from our operations in foreign countries, primarily Japan and Korea. These operations are subject to restrictions on transferring funds out of the countries in which these operations are located. Some of our foreign insurance and investment management operations are, and are likely to continue to be, in emerging markets where this risk as well as risks of discriminatory regulation, labor issues in connection with workers’ associations and trade unions, price controls, exchange controls, nationalization or expropriation of assets, are heightened. If our business model is not successful in a particular country, we may lose all or most of our investment in building and training our sales force in that country.

 

Many of our insurance products sold in international markets provide for the buildup of cash values for the policyholder at contractually fixed guaranteed interest rates, including in Japan. Actual returns on the underlying investments do not necessarily match the guaranteed interest rates and there may be times when the spread between the actual investment returns and these guaranteed rates of return to the policyholder is negative and in which this negative spread may not be offset by the mortality, morbidity and expense charges we earn on the products.

 

Fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates could adversely affect our profitability.

 

We are exposed to foreign currency exchange risks in our domestic general account investment portfolios, other proprietary investment portfolios and through our operations in foreign countries. Currency fluctuations may adversely affect our results of operations or financial condition. For a discussion of our currency exposures and related hedging activities, see “Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk.”

 

Our businesses are heavily regulated and changes in regulation may reduce our profitability.

 

Our businesses are subject to comprehensive regulation and supervision. The purpose of this regulation is primarily to protect our customers and not our shareholders. Many of the laws and regulations to which we are subject are regularly re-examined, and existing or future laws and regulations may become more restrictive or otherwise adversely affect our operations.

 

Prudential Financial is subject to the rules and regulations of the SEC and the NYSE relating to public reporting and disclosure, securities trading, accounting and financial reporting, and corporate governance matters. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and rules and regulations adopted in furtherance of that Act have substantially increased the requirements in these and other areas for public companies such as Prudential Financial.

 

Many insurance regulatory and other governmental or self-regulatory bodies have the authority to review our products and business practices and those of our agents and employees and to bring regulatory or other legal

 

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actions against us if, in their view, our practices, or those of our agents or employees, are improper. These actions can result in substantial fines, penalties or prohibitions or restrictions on our business activities and could adversely affect our business, reputation, results of operations or financial condition. For a discussion of material pending litigation and regulatory matters, see “Legal Proceedings.”

 

Congress from time to time considers pension reform legislation that could make certain of our retirement products and services less attractive to retirement plan sponsors and administrators. For example, current proposals concerning pension funding obligations could significantly increase the costs associated with maintaining defined benefit pension plans. These changes could hinder sales of defined benefit plan products and services and cause plan sponsors to discontinue existing defined benefit plans for which we provide asset management or administrative services. The Bush Administration also continues to propose several tax-favored savings initiatives. These initiatives could hinder sales and persistency of our products and services that support employment based retirement plans.

 

The NAIC has adopted a Model Regulation entitled “Valuation of Life Insurance Policies,” commonly known as “Regulation XXX,” and a supporting Guideline entitled “The Application of the Valuation of Life Insurance Policies,” commonly known as “Guideline AXXX.” The Regulation and supporting Guideline require insurers to establish statutory reserves for term and universal life insurance policies with long-term premium guarantees that are consistent with the statutory reserves required for other individual life insurance policies with similar guarantees. Many market participants believe that this level of reserves is excessive, and we have implemented reinsurance and capital management actions to mitigate the impact of Regulation XXX on our term insurance business. However, we may not be able to implement actions to mitigate the impact of Regulation XXX and Guideline AXXX on future sales of term and universal life insurance products, thereby potentially requiring us to incur higher operating costs than we currently anticipate, reduce our sales of these products or implement measures that may be disruptive to our business.

 

Insurance regulators, as well as industry participants, have also begun to consider potentially significant changes in the way in which statutory reserves and statutory capital are determined, particularly for products with embedded options and guarantees. New regulatory capital requirements have already gone into effect for variable annuity products. The timing of, and extent of, such changes to the statutory reporting framework are uncertain; however, the result could be increases to statutory reserves and capital, and an adverse effect on our products, sales and operating costs.

 

Legal and regulatory actions are inherent in our businesses and could adversely affect our results of operations or harm our businesses or reputation.

 

We are, and in the future may be, subject to legal and regulatory actions in the ordinary course of our businesses, including in businesses that we have divested or placed in wind-down status. Some of these proceedings have been brought on behalf of various alleged classes of complainants. In certain of these matters, the plaintiffs are seeking large and/or indeterminate amounts, including punitive or exemplary damages. Substantial legal liability in these or future legal or regulatory actions could have an adverse affect on us or cause us reputational harm, which in turn could harm our business prospects.

 

Material pending litigation and regulatory matters affecting us, and certain risks to our businesses presented by such matters, are discussed under “Legal Proceedings.” As described there, settlement of the market timing and late trading matters relating to our former Prudential Securities retail securities brokerage operations and certain American Skandia entities could involve, in addition to the payment of fines, penalties and restitution, continuing monitoring, changes to and/or supervision of our business practices, findings that may adversely affect existing or cause additional litigation, adverse publicity and other adverse impacts to our businesses.

 

Our litigation and regulatory matters are subject to many uncertainties, and given their complexity and scope, their outcome cannot be predicted. Our reserves for litigation and regulatory matters may prove to be inadequate. It is possible that our results of operations or cash flow in a particular quarterly or annual period could be materially affected by an ultimate unfavorable resolution of pending litigation and regulatory matters depending, in part, upon the results of operations or cash flow for such period.

 

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The occurrence of natural or man-made disasters could adversely affect our results of operations and financial condition.

 

The occurrence of natural disasters, including hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, fires, explosions, pandemic disease and man-made disasters, including acts of terrorism and military actions, could adversely affect our results of operations or financial condition, including in the following respects:

 

    Catastrophic loss of life due to natural or man-made disasters could cause us to pay benefits at higher levels and/or materially earlier than anticipated and could lead to unexpected changes in persistency rates.

 

    A natural or man-made disaster could result in losses in our investment portfolio or the failure of our counterparties to perform, or cause significant volatility in global financial markets.

 

    A terrorist attack affecting financial institutions in the United States or elsewhere could negatively impact the financial services industry in general and our business operations, investment portfolio and profitability in particular. As previously reported, in August 2004, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security identified our Newark, New Jersey facilities, along with those of several other financial institutions in New York and Washington, D.C., as possible targets of a terrorist attack.

 

    Pandemic disease, caused by a virus such as H5N1 (the “Avian flu” virus), could have a severe adverse effect on Prudential Financial’s business. The potential impact of such a pandemic on Prudential Financial’s results of operations, liquidity and financial position is highly speculative, and would depend on numerous factors, including: the probability of the virus mutating to a form that can be passed from human to human; the rate of contagion if and when that occurs; the regions of the world most affected; the effectiveness of treatment for the infected population; the rates of mortality and morbidity among various segments of the insured versus the uninsured population; the collectibility of reinsurance; the possible macroeconomic effects of a pandemic on the Company’s asset portfolio; the effect on lapses and surrenders of existing policies, as well as sales of new policies; and many other variables.

 

There can be no assurance that our business continuation plans and insurance coverages would be effective in mitigating any negative effects on our operations or profitability in the event of a terrorist attack or other disaster.

 

Our risk management policies and procedures and minority investments in joint ventures may leave us exposed to unidentified or unanticipated risk, which could adversely affect our businesses or result in losses.

 

Our policies and procedures to monitor and manage risks may not be fully effective and may leave us exposed to unidentified and unanticipated risks. Management of operational, legal and regulatory risks requires, among other things, policies and procedures to record properly and verify a large number of transactions and events, and these policies and procedures may not be fully effective. Past or future employee misconduct could result in violations of law by us, regulatory sanctions and/or serious reputational or financial harm and the precautions we take to prevent and detect this activity may not be effective in all cases. A failure of our computer systems or a compromise of their security could also subject us to regulatory sanctions or other claims, harm our reputation, interrupt our operations and adversely affect our business, results of operations or financial condition. In our investments in which we hold a minority interest, including Wachovia Securities Financial Holdings, LLC, we lack management and operational control over its operations, which may prevent us from taking or causing to be taken actions to protect or increase the value of those investments.

 

We face risks arising from acquisitions, divestitures and restructurings, including client losses, surrenders and withdrawals, difficulties in integrating and realizing the projected results of acquisitions and contingent liabilities with respect to dispositions.

 

We face a number of risks arising from acquisition transactions, including the risk that, following the acquisition or reorganization of a business, we could experience client losses, surrenders or withdrawals materially different from those we anticipate, as well as difficulties in integrating and realizing the projected results of acquisitions and restructurings and managing the litigation and regulatory matters to which acquired entities are party. We have retained insurance or reinsurance obligations and other contingent liabilities in connection with our divestiture or winding down of various businesses, including with respect to the retail

 

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securities brokerage and securities clearing operations that we contributed to the joint venture with Wachovia Corporation, and our reserves for these obligations and liabilities may prove to be inadequate. These risks may adversely affect our results of operations or financial condition.

 

Changes in our discount rate, expected rate of return and expected compensation increase assumptions for our pension and other postretirement benefit plans may result in increased expenses and reduce our profitability.

 

We determine our pension and other postretirement benefit plan costs based on assumed discount rates, expected rates of return on plan assets and expected increases in compensation levels and trends in health care costs. Changes in these assumptions may result in increased expenses and reduce our profitability.

 

Our ability to pay shareholder dividends, to continue share repurchases and to meet obligations may be adversely affected by limitations imposed on inter-affiliate distributions and transfers by Prudential Insurance and our other subsidiaries.

 

Prudential Financial is the holding company for all our operations, and dividends, returns of capital and interest income from its subsidiaries are the principal source of funds available to Prudential Financial to pay shareholder dividends, to make share repurchases and to meet its other obligations. These sources of funds are complemented by Prudential Financial’s access to the capital markets and bank facilities. As described under “Business—Regulation” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Liquidity and Capital Resources,” our domestic and foreign insurance and various other subsidiary companies, including Prudential Insurance, are subject to regulatory limitations on the payment of dividends and on other transfers of funds to Prudential Financial. In addition to these regulatory limitations, the terms of the IHC debt contain restrictions potentially limiting dividends by Prudential Insurance applicable to the Financial Services Businesses in the event the Closed Block Business is in financial distress and under other circumstances. These restrictions on Prudential Financial’s subsidiaries may limit such subsidiaries from making dividend payments to Prudential Financial in an amount sufficient to fund Prudential Financial’s cash requirements and shareholder dividends. From time to time, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, or NAIC, and various state and foreign insurance regulators have considered, and may in the future consider, proposals to further limit dividend payments that an insurance company may make without regulatory approval.

 

Regulatory requirements, provisions of our certificate of incorporation and by-laws and our shareholder rights plan could delay, deter or prevent a takeover attempt that shareholders might consider in their best interests.

 

Various states in which our insurance companies are domiciled, including New Jersey, must approve any direct or indirect change of control of insurance companies organized in those states. Under most states’ statutes, an entity is presumed to have control of an insurance company if it owns, directly or indirectly, 10% or more of the voting stock of that insurance company or its parent company. Federal, and in some cases, state, banking authorities would also have to approve the indirect change of control of our banking operations. The federal securities laws could also require reapproval by customers of our investment advisory contracts to manage mutual funds, including mutual funds included in annuity products, upon a change in control. In addition, the New Jersey Business Corporation Act prohibits certain business combinations with interested shareholders. These regulatory and other restrictions may delay a potential merger or sale of Prudential Financial, even if the Board of Directors decides that it is in the best interests of shareholders to merge or be sold.

 

Prudential Financial’s certificate of incorporation and by-laws also contain provisions that may delay, deter or prevent a takeover attempt that shareholders might consider in their best interests. These provisions may adversely affect prevailing market prices for our Common Stock and include: classification of Prudential Financial’s Board of Directors into three classes (pending completion in 2007 of the phased elimination of the classification of the Board); a prohibition on the removal of the remaining classified directors without cause; a restriction on the filling of vacancies on the Board of Directors by shareholders; restrictions on the calling of special meetings by shareholders; a requirement that shareholders may take action without a meeting only by unanimous written consent; advance notice procedures for the nomination of candidates to the Board of Directors

 

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and shareholder proposals to be considered at shareholder meetings; and supermajority voting requirements for the amendment of certain provisions of the certificate of incorporation and by-laws. Prudential Financial’s shareholders rights plan also creates obstacles that may delay, deter or prevent a takeover attempt that shareholders might consider in their best interests.

 

Holders of our Common Stock are subject to risks due to the issuance of our Class B Stock, a second class of common stock.

 

The businesses of Prudential Financial are separated into the Financial Services Businesses and the Closed Block Business, and our Common Stock reflects the performance of the Financial Services Businesses and the Class B Stock reflects the performance of the Closed Block Business. There are a number of risks to holders of our Common Stock by virtue of this dual common stock structure, including:

 

    Even though we allocate all our consolidated assets, liabilities, revenue, expenses and cash flow between the Financial Services Businesses and the Closed Block Business for financial statement purposes, there is no legal separation between the Financial Services Businesses and the Closed Block Business. Holders of Common Stock have no interest in a separate legal entity representing the Financial Services Businesses; holders of the Class B Stock have no interest in a separate legal entity representing the Closed Block Business; and therefore holders of each class of common stock are subject to all of the risks associated with an investment in the Company.

 

    The financial results of the Closed Block Business, including debt service on the IHC debt, will affect Prudential Financial’s consolidated results of operations, financial position and borrowing costs.

 

    The market value of our Common Stock may not reflect solely the performance of the Financial Services Businesses.

 

    We cannot pay cash dividends on our Common Stock for any period if we choose not to pay dividends on the Class B Stock in an aggregate amount at least equal to the lesser of the CB Distributable Cash Flow or the Target Dividend Amount on the Class B Stock for that period. See “Market for Registrant’s Common Equity, Related Stockholder Matters and Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities—Convertibility” for the definition of these terms. Any net losses of the Closed Block Business, and any dividends or distributions on, or repurchases of the Class B Stock, would reduce the assets of Prudential Financial legally available for dividends on the Common Stock.

 

    Net income for the Financial Services Businesses and the Closed Block Business includes general and administrative expenses charged to each of the respective Businesses based on the Company’s methodology for the allocation of such expenses. Cash flows to the Financial Services Businesses from the Closed Block Business related to administrative expenses are determined by a policy servicing fee arrangement that is based upon insurance and policies in force and statutory cash premiums. The difference between the administrative expenses allocated to the Closed Block Business and these cash flow amounts are recorded, on an after tax basis, as direct equity adjustments to the equity balances of the businesses and included in the determination of earnings per share for each Business. A change in cash flow amounts between the Businesses that is inconsistent with changes in general and administrative expenses we incur will affect the earnings per share of the Common Stock and Class B Stock.

 

    Holders of Common Stock and Class B Stock vote together as a single class of common stock under New Jersey law, except as otherwise required by law and except that the holders of the Class B Stock have class voting or consent rights with respect to specified matters directly affecting the Class B Stock.

 

    Shares of Class B Stock are entitled to a higher proportionate amount upon any liquidation, dissolution or winding-up of Prudential Financial, than shares of Common Stock.

 

   

We may exchange the Class B Stock for shares of Common Stock at any time, and the Class B Stock is mandatorily exchangeable in the event of a sale of all or substantially all of the Closed Block Business or a “change of control” of Prudential Financial. Under these circumstances, shares of Class B Stock would be exchanged for shares of Common Stock with an aggregate average market value equal to 120% of the then appraised “Fair Market Value” of the Class B Stock. For a description of “change of control” and “Fair Market Value”, see “Market for Registrant’s Common Equity, Related Stockholder Matters and Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities—Convertibility.” Holders of Class B Stock may in their discretion,

 

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beginning in 2016, and at any time in the event of specified regulatory events, convert their shares of Class B Stock into shares of Common Stock with an aggregate average market value equal to 100% of the then appraised Fair Market Value of the Class B Stock. Any exchange or conversion could occur at a time when either or both of the Common Stock and Class B Stock may be considered overvalued or undervalued. Accordingly, any such exchange or conversion may be disadvantageous to holders of Common Stock.

 

    Our Board of Directors has adopted certain policies regarding inter-business transfers and accounting and tax matters, including the allocation of earnings, with respect to the Financial Services Businesses and Closed Block Business. Although the Board of Directors may change any of these policies, any such decision is subject to the Board of Directors’ general fiduciary duties, and we have agreed with investors in the Class B Stock and the insurer of the IHC debt that, in most cases, the Board of Directors may not change these policies without their consent.

 

ITEM 1B.    UNRESOLVED STAFF COMMENTS

 

None.

 

ITEM 1C.    EXECUTIVE OFFICERS OF THE REGISTRANT

 

The names of the executive officers of Prudential Financial and their respective ages and positions, as of February 28, 2006, were as follows:

 

Name


   Age

  

Title


  

Other Directorships


Arthur F. Ryan

   63   

Chairman, Chief Executive Officer
and President

   Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Vivian L. Banta

   55    Vice Chairman    None

Mark B. Grier

   53    Vice Chairman    None

Rodger A. Lawson

   59    Vice Chairman    None

John R. Strangfeld, Jr.

   52    Vice Chairman    None

Robert Charles Golden

   59    Executive Vice President    None

Susan L. Blount

   48   

Senior Vice President and General Counsel

   None

Richard J. Carbone

   58   

Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

   None

Sharon C. Taylor

   51   

Senior Vice President, Corporate Human Resources

   None

 

Biographical information about Prudential Financial executive officers is as follows:

 

Arthur F. Ryan was elected Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of Prudential Financial in December 2000, and served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Prudential Financial from January 2000 to December 2000. He joined Prudential Insurance as the Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer and President in December 1994. Mr. Ryan was with Chase Manhattan Bank from 1972 to 1994, serving in various executive positions including President and Chief Operating Officer from 1990 to 1994 and Vice Chairman from 1985 to 1990. Mr. Ryan was elected a director of Prudential Financial in December 1999 and has been a director of Prudential Insurance since December 1994.

 

Vivian L. Banta was elected Vice Chairman of Prudential Financial in August 2002. Since January 2000, she variously served as Executive Vice President of Prudential Financial, Senior Vice President, Individual Financial Services, Executive Vice President, Individual Financial Services, Executive Vice President, U.S. Consumer Group, and Chief Executive Officer, Insurance Division of Prudential Insurance, a position she also

 

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holds at this time. Prior to joining Prudential, Ms. Banta was an independent consultant from 1998 to 1999, and served as Executive Vice President, Global Investor Services, Group Executive for Chase Manhattan Bank from 1987 to 1997.

 

Mark B. Grier was elected Vice Chairman of Prudential Financial in August 2002. He served as a director of Prudential Financial from December 1999 to January 2001, Executive Vice President from December 2000 to August 2002 and as Vice President of Prudential Financial from January 2000 to December 2000. He was elected Chief Financial Officer of Prudential Insurance in May 1995. Since May 1995 he has variously served as Executive Vice President, Corporate Governance, Executive Vice President, Financial Management, and Vice Chairman, Financial Management, the position he holds at this time. Prior to joining Prudential, Mr. Grier was an executive with Chase Manhattan Corporation.

 

Rodger A. Lawson was elected Vice Chairman of Prudential Financial in August 2002. He was Executive Vice President of Prudential Financial from February 2001 to August 2002, and previously served as Executive Vice President, International Investments and Global Marketing Communications of Prudential Insurance. He served as Executive Vice President, Marketing and Planning of Prudential Insurance from June 1996 to October 1998. Prior to joining Prudential, Mr. Lawson was the President and Chief Executive Officer of VanEck Global from April 1994 to June 1996; Managing Director and Partner, President and Chief Executive Officer of Global Private Banking and Mutual Funds, Bankers Trust Company from January 1992 to April 1994; Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Fidelity Investments—Retail from May 1985 to May 1991; and President and Chief Executive Officer of Dreyfus Service Corporation from March 1982 to May 1985.

 

John R. Strangfeld, Jr. was elected Vice Chairman of Prudential Financial in August 2002. He was Executive Vice President of Prudential Financial from February 2001 to August 2002. He served as Chief Executive Officer, Prudential Investment Management of Prudential Insurance from October 1998 until April 2002. Mr. Strangfeld was also elected Chairman of the Board and CEO of Prudential Securities (renamed Prudential Equity Group, LLC) in December 2000 and continues to serve as its Chairman. He is a member of the Board of Managers of Wachovia Securities Financial Holdings, LLC, a joint venture formed in July 2003 as part of the combination of the retail brokerage and securities clearing businesses of Prudential and Wachovia. He has been with Prudential since July 1977, serving in various management positions, including Senior Managing Director, The Private Asset Management Group from 1995 to 1998; and Chairman, PRICOA Capital Group (London) Europe from 1989 to 1995.

 

Robert Charles Golden was elected Executive Vice President of Prudential Financial in February 2001 and was elected Executive Vice President, Operations and Systems of Prudential Insurance in June 1997. Previously, he served as Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer for Prudential Securities.

 

Susan L. Blount was elected Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Prudential Financial and Prudential Insurance in May 2005. Ms. Blount has been with Prudential since 1985, serving in various supervisory positions since 2002, including Vice President and Chief Investment Counsel and Vice President and Enterprise Finance Counsel. She served as Vice President, Secretary and Associate General Counsel from 2000 to 2002 and Vice President and Secretary from 1995 to 2000.

 

Richard J. Carbone was elected Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President of Prudential Financial in December 2000 and November 2001, respectively, and was elected Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Prudential Insurance in July 1997. Prior to that, Mr. Carbone was the Global Controller and a Managing Director of Salomon, Inc. from July 1995 to June 1997; and Controller of Bankers Trust New York Corporation and a Managing Director and Controller of Bankers Trust Company from April 1988 to March 1993; and Managing Director and Chief Administrative Officer of the Private Client Group at Bankers Trust Company from March 1993 to June 1995.

 

Sharon C. Taylor was elected Senior Vice President, Corporate Human Resources for Prudential Financial in June 2002. She also serves as Senior Vice President, Corporate Human Resources for Prudential Insurance and the Chair of The Prudential Foundation. Ms. Taylor has been with Prudential since 1976, serving in various human resources management positions, including Vice President of Human Resources Communities of Practice,

 

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from 2000 to 2002; Vice President, Human Resources & Ethics Officer, Individual Financial Services, from 1998 to 2000; Vice President, Staffing and Employee Relations from 1996 to 1998; Management Internal Control Officer from 1994 to 1996; and Vice President, Human Resources and Administration from 1993 to 1994.

 

ITEM 2.    PROPERTIES

 

We own our headquarters building located at 751 Broad Street, Newark, New Jersey, which comprises approximately 0.6 million square feet. Excluding our headquarters building and properties used by the International Insurance and Investments division, which are discussed below, we own seven and lease 15 other principal properties throughout the U.S., some of which are used for home office functions. Our domestic operations also lease approximately 290 other locations throughout the U.S.

 

For our International Insurance operations, we own two home offices located in Korea and Taiwan and lease nine home offices located in Argentina, Brazil, China, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Philippines and Poland. We also own approximately 170 and lease approximately 400 other properties, primarily field offices, located throughout these same countries. For our International Investments segment, we own four branch offices and lease approximately 100 other branch offices throughout Korea, Mexico, Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong, as well as certain countries in Europe.

 

We believe our properties are adequate and suitable for our business as currently conducted and are adequately maintained. The above properties do not include properties we own for investment only.

 

ITEM 3.    LEGAL PROCEEDINGS

 

We are subject to legal and regulatory actions in the ordinary course of our businesses, including class action lawsuits. Our pending legal and regulatory actions include proceedings specific to us and proceedings generally applicable to business practices in the industries in which we operate. In our insurance operations, we are subject to class action lawsuits and individual lawsuits involving a variety of issues, including sales practices, underwriting practices, claims payment and procedures, additional premium charges for premiums paid on a periodic basis, denial or delay of benefits, return of premiums or excessive premium charges and breaching fiduciary duties to customers. In addition to the types of claims generally affecting our insurance operations, with respect to our former automobile and homeowners insurance businesses, we are also subject to certain individual and class action lawsuits involving a variety of issues arising out of activities prior to the sale of these businesses. In our investment-related operations, we are subject to litigation involving commercial disputes with counterparties or partners and class action lawsuits and other litigation alleging, among other things, that we made improper or inadequate disclosures in connection with the sale of assets and annuity and investment products or charged excessive or impermissible fees on these products, recommended unsuitable products to customers, mishandled customer accounts or breached fiduciary duties to customers. In our securities operations, we are subject to class action lawsuits, arbitrations and other actions arising out of our former retail securities brokerage, account management, underwriting, former investment banking and other activities, including claims of improper or inadequate disclosure regarding investments or charges, recommending investments or products that were unsuitable for tax advantaged accounts, assessing impermissible fees or charges, engaging in excessive or unauthorized trading, making improper underwriting allocations, breaching alleged duties to non-customer third parties and breaching fiduciary duties to customers. We may be a defendant in, or be contractually responsible to third parties for, class action lawsuits and individual litigation arising from our other operations, including claims for breach of contract and payment of real estate taxes on transfer of equitable interests in residential properties in our relocation businesses, or the businesses we are winding down or have divested, including claims under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, in connection with our divested residential first mortgage operations and claims related to our discontinued healthcare operations. We are also subject to litigation arising out of our general business activities, such as our investments, contracts, leases and labor and employment relationships, including claims of discrimination and harassment. In some of our pending legal and regulatory actions, parties are seeking large and/or indeterminate amounts, including punitive or exemplary damages. The following is a summary of certain pending proceedings.

 

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Insurance and Annuities

 

In August 2000, plaintiffs filed a purported national class action in the District Court of Valencia County, New Mexico, Azar, et al. v. Prudential Insurance, based upon the alleged failure to adequately disclose the increased costs associated with payment of life insurance premiums on a “modal” basis, i.e., more frequently than once a year. Similar actions have been filed in New Mexico against over a dozen other insurance companies. The complaint asserts claims for breach of the common law duty to disclose material information, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, breach of fiduciary duty, unjust enrichment and fraudulent concealment and seeks injunctive relief, compensatory and punitive damages, both in unspecified amounts, restitution, treble damages, interest, costs and attorneys’ fees. In March 2001, the court entered an order granting partial summary judgment to plaintiffs as to liability. In January 2003, the New Mexico Court of Appeals reversed this finding and dismissed the claims for breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing and breach of fiduciary duty. The case was remanded to the trial court and in November 2004, it held that, as to the named plaintiffs, the non-disclosure was material. In July 2005, the court certified a class of New Mexico only policyholders denying plaintiffs’ motion to include purchasers from 35 additional states. In September 2005, plaintiffs sought to amend the court’s order on class certification with respect to eight additional states. A ruling on that motion is still pending.

 

In October 2001, four housing advocacy groups and several individuals filed an action in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, National Fair Housing Alliance, Inc., et al. v. Prudential Insurance, et al. The complaint alleges, inter alia, that Prudential Insurance and Prudential Property and Casualty Insurance Company intentionally engaged in discriminatory practices to limit, restrict or deny homeowners insurance in several urban areas, including Washington, D.C., Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Richmond, Virginia and Toledo, Ohio, as well as suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The complaint asserts causes of action based on alleged violations of the Fair Housing Act and describes allegedly discriminatory homeowners insurance underwriting guidelines, terms and conditions and rating territories. The complaint seeks declaratory and injunctive relief and compensatory and punitive damages in unspecified amounts. In July 2002, the District Court denied our motion to dismiss. The matter settled in January 2006.

 

The Company, along with a number of other insurance companies, received formal requests for information from the State of New York Attorney General’s Office (NYAG), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Connecticut Attorney General’s Office, the Massachusetts Office of the Attorney General, the Department of Labor, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of California, the District Attorney of the County of San Diego, and various state insurance departments relating to payments to insurance intermediaries and certain other practices that may be viewed as anti-competitive. The Company may receive additional requests from these and other regulators and governmental authorities concerning these and related subjects. The Company is cooperating with these inquiries and has had discussions with certain authorities, including the NYAG, in an effort to resolve the inquiries into this matter. These matters are also the subject of litigation brought by private plaintiffs, including purported class actions that have been consolidated in the multidistrict litigation in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey, In re Employee Benefit Insurance Brokerage Antitrust Litigation, and two shareholder derivative actions, Gillespie v. Ryan and Kahn v. Agnew and the California Department of Banking and Insurance. Both derivative actions were dismissed without prejudice. In Gillespie, the plaintiff entered into a tolling agreement with the Company to permit a Special Evaluation Committee of the Board of Directors to investigate and evaluate his demand that the Company take action regarding these matters. The Committee’s investigation is in progress.

 

In April 2005, we voluntarily commenced a review of the accounting for our reinsurance arrangements to confirm that it complied with applicable accounting rules. This review included an inventory and examination of current and past arrangements, including those relating to our wind down and divested businesses and discontinued operations. Subsequent to commencing our voluntary review, we received a formal request from the Connecticut Attorney General for information regarding our participation in reinsurance transactions generally and a formal request from the SEC for information regarding certain reinsurance contracts entered into with a single counterparty since 1997 as well as specific contracts entered into with that counterparty in the years 1997 through 2002 relating to the Company’s property and casualty insurance operations that were sold in 2003. The Company accounts for these property and casualty contracts as reinsurance. However, if as result of these examinations deposit accounting rather than reinsurance accounting were required to be applied to these property and casualty contracts, there would be no impact on the consolidated financial statements of the Company for

 

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any interim or annual period subsequent to December 31, 2002 and consolidated income (loss) from continuing operations before extraordinary gain on acquisition and cumulative effect of accounting change would be decreased by approximately $25 million in 2002 and $49 million in 2001. These examinations are ongoing and not yet complete, and it is possible that we may receive additional requests from regulators relating to reinsurance arrangements. We intend to cooperate with all such requests.

 

The Company’s subsidiary, American Skandia Life Assurance Corporation, is in discussions with various state insurance departments concerning a remediation program to correct errors in the administration of approximately 11,000 annuity contracts issued by that company. The owners of these contracts did not receive notification that the contracts were approaching or past their designated annuitization date or default annuitization date (both dates referred to as the “contractual annuity date”) and the contracts were not annuitized at their contractual annuity dates. Some of these contracts also were affected by data integrity errors resulting in incorrect contractual annuity dates. The lack of notice and data integrity errors, as reflected on the annuities administrative system, all occurred before the acquisition of the American Skandia entities by the Company. Certain state insurance departments have requested modifications to the remediation program that the Company anticipates will impact the overall cost of the program. The remediation and administrative costs of the remediation program would be subject to the indemnification provisions of the acquisition agreement pursuant to which the Company purchased the American Skandia entities in May 2003 from Skandia.

 

Securities

 

In 1999, a class action lawsuit, Burns, et al. v. Prudential Securities, Inc., et al., was filed in the Marion County, Ohio Court of Common Pleas against Jeffrey Pickett (a former Prudential Securities Incorporated Financial Advisor) and Prudential Securities alleging that Pickett transferred, without authorization, his clients’ equity mutual funds into fixed income mutual funds in October 1998. The claims were based on theories of conversion, breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and negligent supervision. In October 2002, the case was tried and the jury returned a verdict against Prudential Securities and Pickett for $11.7 million in compensatory damages and against Prudential Securities for $250 million in punitive damages. In July 2003, the court denied Prudential Securities’ motion to set aside or reduce the jury verdict and sustained the judgment in the amount of $269 million, including prejudgment interest and attorneys fees. Prudential Securities’ appeal is pending.

 

Prudential Securities has been named as a defendant in a number of industry-wide purported class actions in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York relating to its former securities underwriting business. Plaintiffs in one consolidated proceeding, captioned In re: Initial Public Offering Securities Litigation, allege, among other things, that the underwriters engaged in a scheme involving tying agreements, undisclosed compensation arrangements and research analyst conflicts to manipulate and inflate the prices of shares sold in initial public offerings in violation of the federal securities laws. Certain issuers of these securities and their and former officers and directors have also been named as defendants. In October 2004, the district court granted plaintiffs’ motion for class certification in six “focus cases.” The underwriter defendants appealed that ruling to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which is scheduled to hear argument on it in March 2006. In June 2004, plaintiffs entered into a settlement agreement with the issuers, officers and directors named as defendants in the lawsuits, which the district court preliminarily approved in February 2005. In August 2000, Prudential Securities was named as a defendant, along with other underwriters, in a purported class action, captioned CHS Electronics Inc. v. Credit Suisse First Boston Corp. et al., which alleges on behalf of issuers of securities in initial public offerings that the defendants conspired to fix at 7% the discount that underwriting syndicates receive from issuers in violation of federal antitrust laws. Plaintiffs moved for class certification in September 2004 and for partial summary judgment in November 2005. The class certification motion has been fully briefed, and the summary judgment motion has been deferred pending disposition of the class certification motion. In a related action, captioned Gillet v. Goldman Sachs et al., plaintiffs allege substantially the same antitrust claims on behalf of investors, though only injunctive relief is currently being sought.

 

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Other Matters

 

Mutual Fund Market Timing Practices

 

Commencing in 2003, the Company received formal requests for information relating to the purchase and sale of mutual fund shares and variable annuities from regulators and law enforcement authorities, including the SEC, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), the New Jersey Bureau of Securities (NJBS), the NYAG, the Securities Division of Massachusetts (MSD) and the United States Attorney, District of Massachusetts (USAM). The matters remaining under investigation principally concern the retail brokerage operations of the former Prudential Securities (PSI) and the business of certain American Skandia entities. The Company is cooperating with all investigations.

 

In 2003, in connection with these investigations, the SEC filed a civil action against individual PSI brokers and a branch manager; the MSD filed administrative complaints against both PSI and certain brokers and branch managers. The MSD’s complaint against PSI alleged that it knew or should have known about alleged deceptive market timing and late trading in mutual funds in its Boston branch, failed reasonably to supervise the conduct of the brokers in that branch, and failed to implement controls designed to prevent and detect violation of Massachusetts securities law. The SEC and MSD complaints against former PSI brokers and branch managers were based on allegations related to market timing similar to those the MSD asserted against PSI. These actions remain pending.

 

In August and September 2005, two former PSI brokers pled guilty to criminal charges brought by the USAM based on their participation in deceptive practices relating to market timing activities, and it is possible that additional civil and/or criminal charges may be brought against these and other former PSI personnel.

 

The investigations by the SEC, NYSE, NASD, NJBS, NYAG, MSD and USAM of market timing activities at PSI continue, with each evaluating PSI and its former personnel from the perspective of federal and state laws and regulations and rules of the self-regulatory organizations relevant to its jurisdiction. These investigations focus on brokers in Boston and a few other branch offices in the U.S., their supervisors, and other members of the control structure with responsibilities that related to the market timing activities. The Company believes that pending investigations will likely result in proceedings and/or settlements. The Company is actively seeking global resolution with all of the above noted authorities, although no assurance can be given of a global resolution or separate settlements covering all or any matters under investigation or whether additional matters will be subject to investigation. Any settlement achieved can be expected to result in fines and penalties. The Company has established a reserve for anticipated settlement costs, but there are no assurances that this reserve will prove adequate or that a material increase will not be required.

 

In connection with American Skandia, with the approval of Skandia Insurance Company Ltd. (publ) (“Skandia”), an offer was made by American Skandia to the authorities investigating its companies, the SEC and NYAG, to settle the matters relating to market timing in variable annuities by paying restitution and a civil penalty of $95 million in the aggregate. While not assured, the Company believes these discussions are likely to lead to settlements with these authorities. Any regulatory settlement involving an American Skandia entity would be subject to the indemnification provisions of the acquisition agreement pursuant to which the Company purchased the American Skandia entities in May 2003 from Skandia.

 

If achieved, settlement of the matters relating to PSI and American Skandia also could involve continuing monitoring, changes to and/or supervision of business practices, findings that may adversely affect existing or cause additional litigation, adverse publicity and other adverse impacts to the Company’s businesses.

 

In addition to these regulatory proceedings, in October 2004, the Company and PSI were named as defendants in several class actions brought on behalf of purchasers and holders of shares in a number of mutual fund complexes. The actions are consolidated as part of a multi-district proceeding, In re: Mutual Fund Investment Litigation, pending in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland. The complaints allege that the purchasers and holders were harmed by dilution of the funds’ values and excessive fees, caused by market timing and late trading, and seek unspecified damages. In August 2005, the Company was dismissed from several of the actions, without prejudice to repleading the state claims, but remains a defendant in other actions in the consolidated proceeding. Motions to dismiss the other actions are pending.

 

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Other

 

In November 2003, an action was commenced in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, Enron Corp. v. J.P. Morgan Securities, Inc., et al., against approximately 100 defendants, including Prudential Insurance and related entities, which invested in Enron’s commercial paper. The complaint alleges that Enron’s October 2001 prepayment of its commercial paper is a voidable preference under the bankruptcy laws and constitutes a fraudulent conveyance and that the Company and related entities received prepayment of $125 million. A motion by all defendants to dismiss the complaint was denied in June 2005. Defendants’ motion for leave to appeal is pending.

 

In August 1999, a Prudential Insurance employee and several Prudential Insurance retirees filed an action in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Dupree, et al., v. Prudential Insurance, et al., against Prudential Insurance and its Board of Directors in connection with a group annuity contract entered into in 1989 between the Prudential Retirement Plan and Prudential Insurance. The suit alleged that the annuitization of certain retirement benefits violated ERISA and that, in the event of demutualization, Prudential Insurance would retain shares distributed under the annuity contract in violation of ERISA’s fiduciary duty requirements. In July 2001, plaintiffs filed an amended complaint dropping three counts, and we filed an answer denying the essential allegations of the complaint. The amended complaint seeks injunctive and monetary relief, including the return of what are claimed to be excess investment and advisory fees paid by the Retirement Plan to Prudential. In March 2002, the court dismissed certain of the claims against the individual defendants. A non-jury trial was concluded in January 2005. The court has not yet issued its decision.

 

In September and October 2005, five purported class action lawsuits were filed against the Company, Prudential Securities and Prudential Equity Group LLC claiming that stock brokers were improperly classified as exempt employees under state and federal wage and hour laws and, therefore, were improperly denied overtime pay. The complaints seek back overtime pay and statutory damages, interest, and attorneys’ fees. Two of the complaints, Janowsky v. Wachovia Securities, LLC and Prudential Securities Incorporated and Goldstein v. Prudential Financial, Inc., were filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. The Goldstein complaint purports to have been filed on behalf of a nationwide class. The Janowsky complaint alleges a class of New York brokers. The three complaints filed in California Superior Court, Dewane v. Prudential Equity Group, Prudential Securities Incorporated, and Wachovia Securities LLC; DiLustro v. Prudential Securities Incorporated, Prudential Equity Group, Inc. and Wachovia Securities; and Carayanis v. Prudential Equity Group LLC and Prudential Securities Inc., purport to have been brought on behalf of classes of California brokers.

 

Discontinued Operations

 

In November 1996, plaintiffs filed a purported class action lawsuit against Prudential Insurance, the Prudential Home Mortgage Company, Inc. and several other subsidiaries in the Superior Court of New Jersey, Essex County, Capitol Life Insurance Company v. Prudential Insurance, et al., in connection with the sale of certain subordinated mortgage securities sold by a subsidiary of Prudential Home Mortgage. In February 1999, the court entered an order dismissing all counts without prejudice with leave to refile after limited discovery. In May 2000, plaintiffs filed a second amended complaint that alleges violations of the New Jersey securities and RICO statutes, fraud, conspiracy and negligent misrepresentation, and seeks compensatory as well as treble and punitive damages. Defendants filed a motion to dismiss that was denied in October 2001. In October 2002, plaintiffs’ motion for class certification was denied. Since that time, the court has permitted nine additional investors to intervene as plaintiffs. In August 2005, the court dismissed the New Jersey Securities Act and RICO claims and the negligent misrepresentation claim. Plaintiffs’ application for interlocutory appeal of this ruling was denied.

 

In 2000, a nationwide class action, Shane v. Humana, et al., was brought on behalf of provider physicians and physician groups in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. The complaint alleges that Prudential Insurance and other health care companies engaged in an industry-wide conspiracy to defraud physicians by failing to pay under provider agreements and by unlawfully coercing providers to enter into agreements with unfair and unreasonable terms. An amended complaint, naming additional plaintiffs, including three state medical associations, and an additional defendant, was filed in March 2001, and alleges claims of breach of contract, quantum meruit, unjust enrichment, violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, conspiracy to violate RICO, aiding and abetting RICO violations, and

 

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violations of state prompt pay statutes and the California unfair business practices statute. The amended complaint seeks compensatory and punitive damages in unspecified amounts, treble damages pursuant to RICO, and attorneys’ fees. In September 2002, the District Court granted plaintiffs’ motion for class certification of a nationwide class of provider physicians which was affirmed in September 2004 by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit with respect only to the federal claims for conspiracy to violate RICO and aiding and abetting RICO violations. In September 2005, the district court entered a final order approving the settlement of these claims by Prudential Insurance, which provides for payment to plaintiffs in the amount of $22 million. Two members of the plaintiff class have appealed the final order. In February 2006, the appeals were dismissed.

 

Summary

 

Our litigation and regulatory matters are subject to many uncertainties, and given their complexity and scope, their outcome cannot be predicted. It is possible that our results of operations or cash flow in a particular quarterly or annual period could be materially affected by an ultimate unfavorable resolution of pending litigation and regulatory matters depending, in part, upon the results of operations or cash flow for such period. Management believes, however, that the ultimate outcome of all pending litigation and regulatory matters, after consideration of applicable reserves and rights to indemnification, should not have a material adverse effect on our financial position.

 

ITEM 4.    SUBMISSION OF MATTERS TO A VOTE OF SECURITY HOLDERS

 

No matter was submitted to a vote of security holders of Prudential Financial during the fourth quarter of 2005.

 

PART II

 

ITEM 5.   MARKET FOR REGISTRANT’S COMMON EQUITY, RELATED STOCKHOLDER MATTERS AND ISSUER PURCHASES OF EQUITY SECURITIES

 

General

 

Prudential Financial’s Common Stock was issued to eligible policyholders in Prudential Insurance’s demutualization and sold to investors in Prudential Financial’s initial public offering. The Common Stock began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “PRU” on December 13, 2001. The following table presents the high and low closing prices for the Common Stock on the New York Stock Exchange during the periods indicated and the dividends declared per share during such periods:

 

     High

   Low

   Dividends

2005:

                    

Fourth Quarter

   $ 77.96    $ 63.27    $ 0.780

Third Quarter

     68.30      63.09      —  

Second Quarter

     66.30      55.23      —  

First Quarter

     59.32      52.62      —  

2004:

                    

Fourth Quarter

   $ 55.09    $ 42.87    $ 0.625

Third Quarter

     48.10      44.30      —  

Second Quarter

     46.47      41.05      —  

First Quarter

     48.11      41.62      —  

 

On January 31, 2006, there were 2,716,119 registered holders of record for the Common Stock and 495 million shares outstanding.

 

The Class B Stock was issued to institutional investors (two subsidiaries of American International Group, Inc. and Pacific Life Corp.) in a private placement pursuant to Section 4(2) of the Securities Act of 1933 on the date of demutualization. There is no established public trading market for the Class B Stock. During the fourth quarter of 2005 and 2004, Prudential Financial paid an annual dividend of $9.625 per share of Class B Stock. On January 31, 2006, there were three holders of record for the Class B Stock and 2.0 million shares outstanding.

 

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Prudential Financial’s Board of Directors currently intends to continue to declare and pay annual dividends on the Common Stock and Class B Stock. Future dividend decisions will be based on, and affected by, a number of factors including the financial performance of the Financial Services Businesses and Closed Block Business; our overall financial condition, results of operations, cash requirements and future prospects; regulatory restrictions on the payment of dividends by Prudential Financial’s subsidiaries; and such other factors as the Board of Directors may deem relevant. Dividends payable by Prudential Financial are limited to the amount that would be legally available for payment under New Jersey corporate law. For additional information on dividends and related regulatory restrictions, see “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Liquidity and Capital Resources” and Note 13 to the Consolidated Financial Statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

 

On the date of demutualization, Prudential Financial and Prudential Financial Capital Trust I, or the Trust, a statutory business trust, co-issued 13.8 million 6.75% equity security units, or the Units. Each Unit had a stated amount of $50 and initially consisted of a purchase contract (requiring the holder to purchase shares of Prudential Financial’s Common Stock in November 2004, at a price determined by a formula described in the contract) and a redeemable capital security of the Trust with a stated liquidation amount of $50. Prudential Financial settled the purchase contracts associated with the Units in November 2004. Each purchase contract was settled for 1.47 shares of Prudential Financial’s Common Stock resulting in the issuance of 20.3 million shares of Common Stock. Prudential Financial received $690 million in proceeds from the issuance, to be used for general corporate purposes.

 

In November 2005, Prudential Financial issued in a private placement $2.0 billion of floating rate convertible senior notes, convertible by the holders at any time after issuance into cash and shares of the Company’s Common Stock. The Company used substantially all of the offering proceeds to purchase an investment grade fixed income investment portfolio as well as to repurchase, under the Company’s existing share repurchase authorization, shares of its Common Stock. For additional information about these notes see Note 11 to the Consolidated Financial Statements.

 

See Item 12 for information about our equity compensation plans.

 

Common Stock and Class B Stock

 

The Common Stock and the Class B Stock are separate classes of common stock under New Jersey corporate law.

 

Holders of Common Stock and Class B Stock will be entitled to dividends if and when declared by Prudential Financial’s Board of Directors out of funds legally available to pay those dividends. To the extent dividends are paid on the Class B Stock, shares of Class B Stock are repurchased or the Closed Block Business has net losses, the amount legally available for dividends on the Common Stock will be reduced. In addition, payment of dividends will be subject to the following additional conditions:

 

    Common Stock will be entitled to receive dividends, if and when declared by Prudential Financial’s Board of Directors, only out of assets of the Financial Services Businesses legally available for the payment of dividends under the New Jersey Business Corporation Act as if the Financial Services Businesses were a separate New Jersey corporation; and

 

    Class B Stock will be entitled to receive dividends, if and when declared by Prudential Financial’s Board of Directors, only out of assets of the Closed Block Business legally available for the payment of dividends under the New Jersey Business Corporation Act, as if the Closed Block Business were a separate New Jersey corporation.

 

Dividends declared and paid on the Common Stock will depend upon the financial performance of the Financial Services Businesses. Dividends declared and paid on the Class B Stock will depend upon the financial performance of the Closed Block Business and, as the Closed Block matures, the holders of the Class B Stock will receive the surplus of the Closed Block Business no longer required to support the Closed Block for regulatory purposes. Dividends on the Class B Stock will be payable in an aggregate amount per year at least

 

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equal to the lesser of (1) a “Target Dividend Amount” of $19.25 million or (2) the “CB Distributable Cash Flow,” as defined below in “—Convertibility,” for such year, which is a measure of the net cash flows of the Closed Block Business. Notwithstanding this formula, as with any common stock, we will retain the flexibility to suspend dividends on the Class B Stock; however, if CB Distributable Cash Flow exists for any period and Prudential Financial chooses not to pay dividends on the Class B Stock in an aggregate amount at least equal to the lesser of the CB Distributable Cash Flow or the Target Dividend Amount for that period, then cash dividends cannot be paid on the Common Stock with respect to such period. The principal component of “CB Distributable Cash Flow” will be the amount by which Surplus and Related Assets, determined according to statutory accounting principles, exceed surplus that would be required for the Closed Block Business considered as a separate insurer; provided, however, that “CB Distributable Cash Flow” counts such excess only to the extent distributable as a dividend by Prudential Insurance under specified, but not all, provisions of New Jersey insurance law. Subject to the discretion of the Board of Directors of Prudential Financial, we currently anticipate paying dividends on the Class B Stock at the Target Dividend Amount for the foreseeable future.

 

The shares of Common Stock will vote together with the shares of Class B Stock on all matters (one share, one vote) except as otherwise required by law and except that holders of the Class B Stock will have class voting or consent rights with respect to specified matters directly affecting the Class B Stock.

 

If shares of Class B Stock are outstanding at the time of a liquidation, dissolution or winding-up of Prudential Financial, each share of Common Stock and Class B Stock will be entitled to a share of net liquidation proceeds in proportion to the respective liquidation units of such class. Each share of Common Stock will have one liquidation unit, and each share of Class B Stock will have 2.83215 liquidation units.

 

On December 18, 2001, Prudential Financial’s shareholder rights agreement became effective. Under the shareholder rights agreement, one shareholder protection right is attached to each share of Common Stock but not to any share of Class B Stock. Each right initially entitles the holder to purchase one one-thousandth of a share of a series of Prudential Financial preferred stock upon payment of the exercise price. At the time of the demutualization, the Board of Directors of Prudential Financial determined that the initial exercise price per right is $110, subject to adjustment from time to time as provided in the shareholder rights agreement. The shareholders rights agreement will expire by its terms on December 18, 2011.

 

Convertibility

 

The Common Stock is not convertible.

 

Prudential Financial may, at its option, at any time, exchange all outstanding shares of Class B Stock into such number of shares of Common Stock as have an aggregate average market value (discussed below) equal to 120% of the appraised “Fair Market Value” (discussed below) of the outstanding shares of Class B Stock.

 

In addition, if (1) Prudential Financial sells or otherwise disposes of all or substantially all of the Closed Block Business or (2) a “change of control” of Prudential Financial occurs, Prudential Financial must exchange all outstanding shares of Class B Stock into such number of shares of Common Stock as have an aggregate average market value of 120% of the appraised Fair Market Value of such shares of Class B Stock. For this purpose, “change of control” means the occurrence of any of the following events (whether or not approved by the Board of Directors of Prudential Financial): (a)(i) any person(s) (as defined) (excluding Prudential Financial and specified related entities) is or becomes the beneficial owner (as defined), directly or indirectly, of more than 50% of the total voting power of the then outstanding equity securities of Prudential Financial; or (ii) Prudential Financial merges with, or consolidates with, another person or disposes of all or substantially all of its assets to any person, other than, in the case of either clause (i) or (ii), any transaction where immediately after such transaction the persons that beneficially owned immediately prior to the transaction the then outstanding voting equity securities of Prudential Financial beneficially own more than 50% of the total voting power of the then outstanding voting securities of the surviving person; or (b) during any year or any period of two consecutive years, individuals who at the beginning of such period constituted the Board of Directors of Prudential Financial (together with any new directors whose election by such Board of Directors or whose nomination for election by the shareholders of Prudential Financial was approved by a vote of a majority of the directors of Prudential

 

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Financial then still in office who were either directors at the beginning of such period or whose election or nomination for election was previously so approved) cease for any reason, other than pursuant to (x) a proposal or request that the Board of Directors be changed as to which the holder of the Class Stock seeking the conversion has participated or assisted or is participating or assisting or (y) retirements in the ordinary course (as defined), to constitute a majority of the Board of Directors then in office.

 

Holders of Class B Stock will be permitted to convert their shares of Class B Stock into such number of shares of Common Stock as have an aggregate average market value equal to 100% of the appraised Fair Market Value of the outstanding shares of Class B Stock (1) in the holder’s sole discretion, in the year 2016 or at any time thereafter, and (2) at any time in the event that (a) the Class B Stock will no longer be treated as equity of Prudential Financial for federal income tax purposes or (b) the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance amends, alters, changes or modifies the regulation of the Closed Block, the Closed Block Business, the Class B Stock or the IHC debt in a manner that materially adversely affects the CB Distributable Cash Flow (as defined below); provided, however, that in no event may a holder of Class B Stock convert shares of Class B Stock to the extent such holder immediately upon such conversion, together with its affiliates, would be the “beneficial owner,” as defined under the Exchange Act, of in excess of 9.9% of the total outstanding voting power of Prudential Financial’s voting securities. In the event a holder of shares of Class B Stock requests to convert shares pursuant to clause (2)(a) in the preceding sentence, Prudential Financial may elect, instead of effecting such conversion, to increase the Target Dividend Amount to $12.6875 per share per annum retroactively from the time of issuance of the Class B Stock.

 

“CB Distributable Cash Flow” means, for any quarterly or annual period, the sum of (i) the excess of (a) the Surplus and Related Assets over (b) the “Required Surplus” applicable to the Closed Block Business within Prudential Insurance, to the extent that Prudential Insurance is able to distribute such excess as a dividend to Prudential Holdings, LLC (“PHLLC”) under New Jersey law without giving effect, directly or indirectly, to the “earned surplus” requirement of Section 17:27A-4c.(3) of the New Jersey Insurance Holding Company Systems Law, plus (ii) any amount held by PHLLC allocated to the Closed Block Business in excess of remaining debt service payments on the IHC debt. For purposes of the foregoing, “Required Surplus” means the amount of surplus applicable to the Closed Block Business within Prudential Insurance that would be required to maintain a quotient (expressed as a percentage) of (i) the “Total Adjusted Capital” applicable to the Closed Block Business within Prudential Insurance (including any applicable dividend reserves) divided by (ii) the “Company Action Level RBC” applicable to the Closed Block Business within Prudential Insurance, equal to 100%, where “Total Adjusted Capital” and “Company Action Level RBC” are as defined in the regulations promulgated under the New Jersey Dynamic Capital and Surplus Act of 1993. These amounts are determined according to statutory accounting principles.

 

In the event of any reclassification, recapitalization or exchange of, or any tender offer or exchange offer for, the outstanding shares of Common Stock, including by merger, consolidation or other business combination, as a result of which shares of Common Stock are exchanged for or converted into another security which is both registered under the Exchange Act and publicly traded, then the Class B Stock will remain outstanding (unless exchanged by virtue of a “change of control” occurring or otherwise, or otherwise converted) and, in the event 50% or more of the outstanding shares of Common Stock are so exchanged or converted, holders of outstanding Class B Stock will be entitled to receive, in the event of any subsequent exchange or conversion, the securities into which the Common Stock has been exchanged or converted by virtue of such reclassification, recapitalization, merger, consolidation, tender offer, exchange offer or other business combination. If, in the event of any reclassification, recapitalization or exchange, or any tender or exchange offer for, the outstanding shares of Common Stock, including by merger, consolidation or other business combination, as a result of which a majority of the outstanding shares of Common Stock are converted into or exchanged or purchased for either cash or securities which are not public securities, or a combination thereof, the Class B Stock will be entitled to receive cash and/or securities of the type and in the proportion that such holders of Class B Stock would have received if an exchange or conversion of the Class B Stock had occurred immediately prior to the conversion, exchange or purchase of a majority of the outstanding shares of Common Stock and the holders of Class B Stock had participated as holders of Common Stock in such conversion, exchange or purchase. The amount of cash and/or securities payable upon such exchange or conversion will be calculated based upon the Fair Market Value of the Class B Stock as of the date on which the Common Stock was exchanged, converted or purchased and will be multiplied by 120%.

 

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For purposes of all exchanges and conversions, the “average market value” of the Common Stock will be determined during a specified 20 trading day period preceding the time of the exchange or conversion. “Fair Market Value” of the Class B Stock means the fair market value of all of the outstanding shares of Class B Stock as determined by appraisal by a nationally recognized actuarial or other competent firm independent of and selected by the Board of Directors of Prudential Financial and approved by the holders of a majority of the outstanding shares of Class B Stock. Fair Market Value will be the present value of expected future cash flows to holders of the Class B Stock, reduced by any payables to the Financial Services Businesses. Future cash flows will be projected consistent with the policy, as described in the Plan of Reorganization, for the Board of Directors of Prudential Insurance to declare policyholder dividends based on actual experience in the Closed Block. Following the repayment in full of the IHC debt, these cash flows shall be the excess of statutory surplus applicable to the Closed Block Business over Required Surplus (as defined in the definition of “CB Distributable Cash Flow”) for each period that would be distributable as a dividend under New Jersey law if the Closed Block Business were a separate insurer. These cash flows will be discounted at an equity rate of return, to be estimated as a risk-free rate plus an equity risk premium. The risk-free rate will be an appropriate ten-year U.S. Treasury rate reported by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The equity risk premium will be eight and one quarter percent initially, declining evenly to four percent over the following 21 years and remaining constant thereafter. Fair Market Value will be determined by appraisal as of a specified date preceding the time of the exchange or conversion.

 

Any exchange or conversion of Class B Stock into Common Stock could occur at a time when either or both of the Common Stock and Class B Stock may be considered to be overvalued or undervalued. In the future, if the Class B Stock is exchanged for or converted into Common Stock, the number of shares of Common Stock then obtainable by the Class B Stockholders might constitute a higher proportion of the total shares of Common Stock then outstanding than the proportion represented by (x) the number of shares of Class B Stock initially issued divided by (y) the total number of shares of Common Stock outstanding upon completion of the demutualization. The degree of any such proportionate increase would depend principally on: the performance of the Closed Block Business over time and the valuation of the Closed Block Business at the time of exchange or conversion; whether the exchange or conversion implemented involves a premium; the number of any new shares of Common Stock we issue after the demutualization for financing, acquisition or other purposes or any repurchases of Common Stock that we may make; and the market value of our Common Stock at the time of exchange or conversion.

 

Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities

 

The following table provides information about purchases by the Company during the three months ended December 31, 2005 of its Common Stock.

 

Period


   Total Number of
Shares
Purchased(1)(2)


   Average
Price Paid
per Share


   Total Number of Shares
Purchased as Part of
Publicly Announced
Program(1)


   Approximate Dollar
Value of Shares that
May Yet be Purchased
under the Program(3)


October 1, 2005 through October 31, 2005

   3,089,587    $ 66.85    3,074,500       

November 1, 2005 through November 30, 2005

   4,518,129    $ 74.29    4,513,300       

December 1, 2005 through December 31, 2005

   1,105,053    $ 75.55    1,102,400       
    
         
  

Total

   8,712,769    $ 71.81    8,690,200    $ —  
    
         
  


(1)   In November 2004, Prudential Financial’s Board of Directors authorized a stock repurchase program under which Prudential Financial was authorized to repurchase up to $1.5 billion of its outstanding Common Stock in 2005. In June 2005, the Board authorized an increase in the annual rate of share repurchases from $1.5 billion to $2.1 billion during calendar year 2005.
(2)   Includes shares of Common Stock withheld from participants for income tax withholding purposes whose shares of restricted stock and restricted stock units vested during the period. Restricted stock and restricted stock units were issued to participants pursuant to the Prudential Financial, Inc. Omnibus Incentive Plan that was adopted by the Company’s Board of Directors in March 2003.
(3)   The stock repurchase program authorized in 2005 expired on December 31, 2005 and, therefore, the Company can no longer purchase any additional shares of Common Stock under this authorization. In November 2005, Prudential Financial’s Board of Directors authorized the Company to repurchase up to $2.5 billion of its outstanding Common Stock in calendar year 2006.

 

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ITEM 6.    SELECTED FINANCIAL DATA

 

We derived the selected consolidated income statement data for the years ended December 31, 2005, 2004 and 2003 and the selected consolidated balance sheet data as of December 31, 2005 and 2004 from our Consolidated Financial Statements included elsewhere herein. We derived the selected consolidated income statement data for the years ended December 31, 2002 and 2001 and the selected consolidated balance sheet data as of December 31, 2003, 2002 and 2001 from consolidated financial statements not included herein.

 

The 2005 income tax provision includes a benefit of $720 million from reduction of tax liabilities in connection with the Internal Revenue Service examination of our tax returns for the years 1997 through 2001.

 

On April 1, 2004, we acquired the retirement business of CIGNA Corporation. Results for 2004 include results of that business from the date of acquisition.

 

On July 1, 2003, we completed an agreement with Wachovia Corporation, or Wachovia, to combine each company’s respective retail securities brokerage and clearing operations forming a joint venture, Wachovia Securities. We have a 38% ownership interest in the joint venture, while Wachovia owns the remaining 62%. The transaction included our securities brokerage operations but did not include our equity sales, trading and research operations. As part of the transaction we retained certain assets and liabilities related to the contributed businesses, including liabilities for certain litigation and regulatory matters. We account for our 38% ownership of the joint venture under the equity method of accounting; periods prior to July 1, 2003, continue to reflect the results of our previously wholly owned securities brokerage operations on a fully consolidated basis. Accordingly, operating results for 2005 and 2004 reflect earnings from the joint venture on the equity basis. Results for 2003 reflect our securities brokerage operations on a consolidated basis for the first six months of 2003 and earnings from the joint venture on the equity basis for the remaining six month period. Results for 2002 and prior years reflect our securities brokerage operations on a fully consolidated basis.

 

On May 1, 2003, we acquired Skandia U.S. Inc., which included American Skandia, Inc. Results presented below include results of American Skandia from the date of acquisition.

 

In April 2001, we acquired Gibraltar Life, which has adopted a November 30 fiscal year end. Consolidated balance sheet data as of December 31, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002 and 2001 includes Gibraltar Life assets and liabilities as of November 30 and fully consolidated income statement data for 2001 includes Gibraltar Life results from April 2, 2001, the date of its reorganization, through November 30, 2001. Consolidated income statement data for 2005, 2004, 2003 and 2002 includes Gibraltar Life results for the twelve months ended November 30, 2005, 2004, 2003 and 2002, respectively.

 

We have made several dispositions that materially affect the comparability of the data presented below. In the fourth quarter of 2003, we completed the sale of our property and casualty insurance companies that operated nationally in 48 states outside of New Jersey, and the District of Columbia, to Liberty Mutual Group, as well as our New Jersey property and casualty insurance companies to Palisades Group. Results for 2003 include a pre-tax loss of $491 million related to the disposition of these businesses. In the fourth quarter of 2000, we terminated the capital markets activities of Prudential Securities. This business had a pre-tax loss of $22 million in 2004, pre-tax income of $287 million in 2003, including the gain from a $332 million settlement of an arbitration award, a pre-tax loss of $36 million in 2002 and a pre-tax loss of $159 million in 2001. We incurred losses of $81 million in 2003 and $79 million in 2002 under a stop-loss agreement we entered into at the time of sale. Gibraltar Casualty had no impact on results in 2001.

 

On December 18, 2001, Prudential Insurance converted from a mutual life insurance company owned by its policyholders to a stock life insurance company and became an indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of Prudential Financial. “Demutualization costs and expenses” amounted to $588 million in 2001. “Demutualization costs and expenses” in 2001 include $340 million of demutualization consideration paid to former Canadian branch policyholders.

 

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This selected consolidated financial information should be read in conjunction with “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and the Consolidated Financial Statements included elsewhere herein.

 

     Year Ended December 31,

 
         2005    

    2004

    2003

    2002

        2001    

 
     (in millions, except per share and ratio information)  

Income Statement Data:

                                        

Revenues:

                                        

Premiums

   $ 13,685     $ 12,459     $ 13,112     $ 12,860     $ 11,714  

Policy charges and fee income

     2,555       2,372       2,012       1,815       2,062  

Net investment income

     10,560       9,430       8,668       8,809       9,079  

Realized investment gains (losses), net

     1,375       798       380       (1,300 )     (603 )

Asset management fees and other income

     3,533       3,064       3,490       3,858       4,163  
    


 


 


 


 


Total revenues

     31,708       28,123       27,662       26,042       26,415  
    


 


 


 


 


Benefits and expenses:

                                        

Policyholders’ benefits

     13,840       12,836       13,287       13,197       12,280  

Interest credited to policyholders’ account balances

     2,699       2,359       1,857       1,869       1,826  

Dividends to policyholders

     2,860       2,485       2,602       2,644       2,722  

General and administrative expenses

     7,838