NEW YORK (TheStreet)-- MetLife(MET) changed its compensation guidelines for senior executives in order to avoid comparisons to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway(BRK.A).
MetLife's compensation committee made the change after Berkshire Hathaway was added to the Standard & Poor's Insurance Index, which is used by MetLife to determine appropriate pay for senior managers.
But since Berkshire has a large portion of its business outside of the insurance and the financial services industry -- such as Burlington Northern Santa Fe -- MetLife's compensation committee determined the inclusion would throw off MetLife's compensation metrics.
"Without this prospective change, BHI would comprise a disproportionate component of the Insurance Index Comparators, representing over 40% of the total market capitalization of the Insurance Index Comparators as of October 21, 2010," said the SEC filing.
Berkshire has a 31 percent weighting in the S&P 500 Insurance Index, while MetLife has a weighting of 9.1 percent, according to Bloomberg.
MetLife's CEO Robert Henrikson made $11.6 million in total compensation last year, according to a March proxy filing.
--Written by Maria Woehr in New York.
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