As CFO and executive vice president of MetLife, BillWheeler is widely credited with playing a key role in steering the$41 billion insurance company through the perilous shoals of thecredit crisis and recession, and bringing it out on the other sidestronger and bigger than before.

But Wheeler, 48, is quick to credit others in the company who“made some pretty good investment calls” before the crisis hit.Notably, he says, as early as 2005 MetLife became concerned aboutstructured investments and started getting out of debt productsthat were based on subprime mortgages. Wheeler also “vividlyrecalls” a board meeting in late 2007, he says, when it was decidedthat a recession was ahead, “and we had to get out of cyclicalbusinesses–the auto companies, the airlines and the builders.”