Good morning everyone. I am going to touch on several highlights for 2007 and where are headed in 2008. We are very pleased with company’s strong 2007 results. If you turn to slide3, you will see that our solid fourth quarter finished off a record setting year for us. Net income for 2007 came in at $2.9 billion, a record for the company. Core earnings rose to another full year record $3.5 billion. Core earnings per share were up 21% over 2006 to $10.99 driven by double digit core earnings growth both in our property causality and life operations. Book value growth again in last 12 months exceeded our long term growth goal of double digit growth even with market challenges we face in the second half of 2007. Since the end of 2006, book value per share excluding AOCI is up 11% and our return on equity topped 15%. As you know, the credit markets remained extremely volatile in the fourth quarter. This volatility contributed to the $429 million of net realized losses recorded in the fourth quarter. Obviously, we do not like seeing losses of this magnitude in our portfolio. Our investment professionals are actively managing a diversified $95 billion general accounts portfolio. With most of the portfolio invested in fix maturities, it is difficult to avoid credit losses in markets like these. Now, the first few weeks of 2008 have seen a continuation of market volatility. Investors are now looking at credit risk across a number of investment categories and the latest area of concern is muni bonds in light of the issues faced by bond insurance. We hold about $13.5 billion in muni bonds and slightly half of these securities are wrapped with insurance. As David will cover later in the call we don’t expect the…

Before I start, I just want to echo Ramani’s comments on David Johnson. I think everyone on this call knows David to be enormously talented and has contributed greatly to The Hartford’s success but just want to add on the behalf of the management team that he has also been a great teammate and a superb business partner and I personally look forward to working with him as does the rest of the management team over the next few months. Turning to the quarter, our property and casualty results are highlighted on slide 5. Our property casualty operation finished a record year for core earnings with solid performance in the fourth quarter. Core earnings were $414 million. This marks the fourth time in the last five quarters that core earnings pushed above the $400 million mark. Good underwriting results, favorable weather and prior year reserve releases has helped us achieve these very good results. Written premiums were $2.5 billion in fourth quarter, 4% below last year. Even though our top line has declined, we grew policies in force in personal lines, small commercial and middle market over the past year. Our fourth quarter combined ratio is 91.1% in ongoing operation, including 2.6 points of cap losses. That is a very good result, considering recent industry trends. Of course a number of items affected the quarter, including 4.8 points of prior year reserve releases. The releases were partially off set by some reverse strengthening for the ’07 accident year in higher than usual policy holder dividends. The impact of each of these items varies by business and since all the details are in our IFS I would not go through every segment. Instead I would like to focus on the key trans we see shaping our outlook for ’08. Slide 6…

Let’s turn to slide 9. I am pleased to report that our capital loss came in at bit better than what we predicted in December. Long term volatility subsided somewhat at year end but credit spreads continued to widen. Overall impairments were a little higher than projected and losses in our hedged GMWB liability were substantially lower. These realized losses effect GAAP book value but not our capital position. As a US insurer, our capital is measured under Statutory accounting, which differs from GAAP. We estimate that our roughly $430 million GAAP realized loss pre-tax, will translate to more than $100 million gain, under statutory accounting. The largest reason for this anomaly is the accounting treatment for GMWB Hedging. Under GAAP our GMWB liability and hedge assets are both fair valued. When the hedging works as it did in this quarter, the change in the liability is substantially offset by a similar change in the hedge assets. Under statutory accounting, on the other hand, the hedge assets are fair valued, but the GMWB liability is not. On our stat books, the change in fair value of our hedge assets drove an increase in surplus. Also, bond impairments under GAAP are now largely driven by changes in market value. Under the current stat rules it still requires a fundamental credit development to trigger impairment, so we did not see the same level of impairments on our statutory books. Bottom line is that at year end, our statutory capital position remained very strong and our $1.5 billion capital margin was completely untouched. Also, I want to comment briefly on our guidance, given the impact of market levels on our asset-based fee revenues. As we noted in our press release, we will be at the low end of our guidance range if the…

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from the line of Jay Cohen with Merrill Lynch. Jay Cohen – Merrill Lynch: I just want to ask one question on the property casualty side and on the lifeside, as well. On the property casualty side I guess one thing that stood out a little bit was the accident year number and the personal lines business. I know that included some current year development, a smaller issue is certainly weather I am sure. When you see that number does it make you rethink your pricing at all? Are you going take that information and may boost pricing in certain markets in the personal lines area just given what maybe some underlying pressure on margins?

I guess the first thing I would say Jay is we want to look at this on a year over year basis full year, because as you say there are some one time unusual items in the fourth quarter and I think on that basis, if you have to look at it on an ex-cap, ex-prior year basis, the development is not that big. In the quarter, obviously, there was some development based on current accident year, adjustments, most of those relating to some of the things we have been talking about, with respect to what we have seen on frequency over the course of the year. We said that we are going to look at pricing by geography, maybe make some adjustments here and there, but fundamentally we are still feeling good about our margins and making target returns. The other thing is obviously what we said before is that we expect that loss cost development will moderate a little bit ’08 over at ’07, so that plays into how we think about it as well. Jay Cohen – Merrill Lynch: And, just one follow-up on that, in public too early in the year, they even gauged that, but that view, is that yet being supported by the data you are saying on claims?

I guess what I said Jay, as you say very early days, but what we have seen at the very end of ’07 as we pivot in to ’08, it is consistent with that view. Jay Cohen – Merrill Lynch: What are the scribed fees are now, so basis points on assets related to VA business with living benefit features.

There is no one answer to that because it varies by product, but they are up for the cohorts that we are writing in the latter part of the quarter with market volatility up, so the answer is any where up probably from 10 to 25 basis points, depending on the product. That moves around a fair amount, we reset that weekly, I think, in terms of the cohorts that we book. So it is quite granular and it is a different answer for each week.

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Kligerman with UBS. Andrew Kligerman – UBS: Where do you think you will appear when we see you in your the next role? Will it be similar to the CFO type role you are in or something quite extremely different?

Well, courtesy of the good efforts of the folks here at The Hartford, I am here for a fair amount of time and I have really not begun to explore my next opportunity. Generally, people like each other, they want to start right away and I cannot do that. So I am going to take the opportunity of the next few months to think about that. I love being a CFO, it is a great job, but I have the luxury at this point to think about, whether I might want to do something else. I love good disclosure, but what I am disclosuring right now is that I really do not know. It is going to be fun to think about. Andrew Kligerman – UBS: Shifting over to the PNC business, with written premiums down 4% for the quarter and targeted 0-3% growth in ‘08, I am just kind of a rattling of, small commercial down 3, personal line only up 1, then your target is better than that. I know Tom was mentioning potential growth in agents or personal lines, maybe some new products, but given that in the past year guidance is not a net on written premium growth. What is you confidence level in your ability to make that 0-3 and maybe some of the reasons why you may or may not have confidence in some of the more predictable lines, like small commercial and personal line.

Let met start that Andrew, since I have been downtown here and watching the property causality team, I have been impressed. Literally they are looking at every place, within the discipline that’s really is the hallmark of The Hartford. They are looking in each line or pockets of opportunity, in places, in geographies and industries where we can be successful and that is across all lines, our commendable numbers given the market environment and the discipline which we are approaching at. I turn it over to Neal to get a little bit more specific.

Let me start with the fourth quarter premium and then pivot over to how we are thinking about that as we go in to ’08. If you look at personal lines, for example, if you x out omnis, the modest one is a +1 and in the commercial lines area, a meaningful amount of the top line pressure is the result of state mandated rate changes and in particular, in New York, where there was one time requirement to give back rate with respect to the unearned premium reserve for comp business written in the state. If you adjust all that out, I think the year over year quarter comparisons are rather better than those that you sighted and so, we start with that and then, we think about pivoting it to ’08. We feel very good about a range of initiatives that we have underway, across our segments. So in personal lines we are releasing, as Tom mentioned in his opening comments, product both in the agency and in the AARP businesses. We feel very good about that, those will be rolling in over the course of ’08. We are going to be putting a thousand new agents on our rolls, and so forth. In small commercial again, we expect in ’08 product improvement, some new releases, as well as, meaningful enhancements to our service capabilities and ease of doing business. And in the middle market, an awful lot of attention to retention and our retention numbers have picked up. As you see within the quarter, they picked up sequentially within the quarter and we are really focusing on retaining what is for us a very profitable book of business. We have really had a lot of success in doing that. So all those things, as well as, a number of new business initiatives, where we feel, for example, middle market, that there are still good opportunities for us to go profitable business by line, by geography and so forth. All of that makes us feel good about the guidance that we have provided you. Andrew Kligerman – UBS: Last, quickly on group benefit, 16% fall in the first nine months, up 26% in the fourth quarter, in terms of sales. Does the momentum carry it to the next year and what are the competitive dynamics?

I would say that sales tend to be lumpy over the quarters. We are in all markets, small all the way to national accounts and so, I would not read so much into the fourth quarter run up. Having said that we do feel good about our core lines, life and disability for the first quarter, but there is less competition out there, I think that small case market will be little bit more challenging and that all is reflected in our guidance. Andrew Kligerman – UBS: Thanks Liz.

Your next question comes from Darin Arita with Deutsche Bank Securities Darin Arita – Deutsche Bank Securities: Good morning. I was hoping to talk on Japanese annuity business. Tom, you mentioned that you expect the FIEL system to work its way through by the end of the first quarter. Can you explain a little more on what that means and why you think that might potentially increase sales in Japan.

I will have Liz give the real color on that and I think in part just comes from our people on the ground and also just looking at sales. In the beginning of FIEL really fell precipitously and it crawled back. Liz you want to add on that? Ramani Ayer – CEO, Chairman of Exec. Committee, Chairman of Hartford Fire: Let me just give a little bit of color on FIEL again, as a reminder, it was an industry issues so it affected sales of everything, from mutual, funds to JZBs, to variable annuities. For example, if you look at mutual funds sales for the fourth quarter of ’07, they were down about 19% and index fund flows were down about 50%. We do not have formal data on VA sales, but our best estimate is bank sales, which comprise most of the markets were down about 25% to 30% for the fourth quarter, so clearly we see this as an industry issue. However, we do believe that December sales started to tick up, so that is why between that and all of the conversations we had with our distributors we do believe that it will work itself through by the end of March. Now, having said that we all know that the Japanese market has really taken a hit, so down close to a third in about six months, although it rebounded yesterday and so forth. That is giving Japanese customers pause in their buying behavior, so lots going on in Japan and in the near term that is reflected in our guidance, lots of competition, but I will say again and stress, we are bullish over the long term in Japan. Variable annuity assets at about 150 billion as of September, only represents 1% of the financial assets in the country, so we think guarantees, especially in light of what we seen will play well, we think the industry will grow and so, the second half of the year uptick in our guidance and certainly we believe more bullish over longer term. Finally we are launching a product in the first quarter and so, that is all the reflect in our guidance.

Darin, I think an important point that Liz wants to make is you comment on the Japanese equity market being weighed down. I think it is important that everyone out there understand that because of the diversification of our portfolio within the VA products , the actual investment return in our products is down a lot less and this is one of the areas where our allocations within the portfolio has really helped the customer.

Absolutely and I think that they will see that, I mean we see that there returns were flat for the year before fees, were less in equities typically than the US about 44%, with only about 23% of our in force in Japanese equities, and of course the rest in Japanese bonds and global bonds. Clearly, we have more diversified mix and that should bode well for our customers, but I am saying new customer thinking about making purchases right now were little tepid. Darin Arita – Deutsche Bank Securities: And then, sticking with that and taking it a little bit more broad. Can you talk about some of the metrics that you are looking at, with respect to your living benefit liabilities and how that is tracking first in Japan then also in the US.

Question on our living benefit liabilities, are we tracking that?

Darin are you GAAP or stat or you … Darin Arita – Deutsche Bank Securities: I would be curious on whatever is important here, but I would say both.

Let us start with the US, you saw the net results of derivative activity from GMWB in the fourth quarter was relatively low, that is obviously been a volatile ride. In December we shared with you where the mark was at the end of November, which was over $100 million. The big impact there is when you have the big spikes in market volatility. The hedges have done, as one would expect, extremely well on Delta, on interest rate, its big spike in Vega and volatility, which are difficult to rebalance again, where you see the slippage and we always expected that to happen. As long term ball came back in through the month of December, you have the mark that you see in our financial statement. Again on that aspect of it, we feel pretty good. On the statutory aspect of it, again, which I believed is the real issue that ensures need to track with regards to these liabilities. Again, we are in good shape as of year end. The principal mark date per statutory surpluses and annual mark, but that one again as we have talked to investors before if you had a very dramatic movement down in the market that could create a large statutory margin cost, we have talked about, but we are in a pretty good shape right now. In Japan again, as I think Liz pointed out, this is a very diversified book, so while the liability will probably will mark up a tiny bit, you are not seeing giant surges with regards to our exposure there the way you would if it was all in one Asian equity class. So far so good for volatile markets. Darin Arita – Deutsche Bank Securities: Just to follow up, I mean, are there any specific numbers that you are looking at in terms of the benefits that are in the money and things that you can share along those lines.

The disclosure on our IFS is on page L6, so you could just look at our our IFS and you will see it.

Our next questions comes from the line of Thomas Gallagher – Credit Suisse Thomas Gallagher – Credit Suisse: I just want to understand your comments about sort of the DAC sensitivity to equity market. If I understood you correctly, should we assume that you could withstand roughly another 15% drop in the equity market before you would sort of trigger an out of period impairment, potentially?

Yes. I have to go figure out how that percentage lines up, as what I said. But basically about the same as bad as it has been since last July will have to happen again. Now again, there is a separate analysis for Japan versus the US so you can have scenario where one triggered but the other did not, but yes, that is a pretty good rule of thumb. Thomas Gallagher – Credit Suisse: Okay, second question is, your comment about the lower statutory capital loses, can you just give us a sense for, if you had $318 million of impairment on a GAAP basis this quarter, what was that actual number on a stat counting basis and why would it be meaningfully different?

The rough estimate was that the stat impairment impact was kind a 125 to 150 range, so was significantly less. Particularly the principal reason is that GAAP framework for impairment has evolved over the last three or four years, and it is now one where in the phase of a significant change in the trading value of the security, the rebuttable presumption is that you will impair that bond and that can happen if the market value shifts dramatically even if there is no downgrade, if the analysis of the cash flows underlying the security don’t indicate any recoverability issue, any of the kind of a traditional matrix associated with credit impairment, which are still the rules under current stat accounting. So you could have a save something trades down to 75% of book for GAAP, that is going to be a hard presumption not to impair there even if it is not been downgraded and you think the fundamentals are pretty good, stat on the other would not look for you to impair in that scenario Thomas Gallagher – Credit Suisse: Okay, so we are going to see some kind of divergence between a loss recognition on GAAP and stat as we go forward here with GAAP being a lower threshold in terms of loss expectation going more toward a market value based approach.

Well, I would not want to assert that there is a fixed relationship between the two and the stat will always be lower. There are other things in stat on the other hand that are much more sensitive to different things than GAAP. So for example, interest rates can sometimes having interesting impact on your stat liability, and can create loses or statutory surplus and scenarios where you see nothing in GAAP. Also as I was talking before hand, stat in terms of a CTE capital requirement is much more sensitive to absolute mocves in the stock price, and would product a larger loss than probably our SFAS 133 and now SFAS 157 liability might indicate to the big market, it was like a 30% drop. So if there is, stat can be worse than some scenarios too, but with respect to credit impairment I think that is true. You will generally see stat being less than GAAP. Thomas Gallagher – Credit Suisse: The last question I had is just want to understand there is obviously a lot of accounting noise with the variable annuity hedging, but to try and simplify if that is possible, as I understand it, you all run about 30 basis points through the GAAP P&L or if you can remind us how much is being run through operating earnings, and then the separate question is, if you look at the breakage we have had on an economic basis your estimative breakage on economic basis, what would that incremental cost have been. Is it trued up this quarter or maybe the last few quarters?

The exact amount of the writer fee which is attributed to core earnings as a fee revenue varies by cohorts and those who go over time, but I think it is fair to say that over most of the life of the product that has been between 10 and 30 basis points and then it is only move out of that range in extreme market condition. When you talk about economic breakage, it is interesting, I kind a have to almost form and redefine the answer in order to try to give it to you because there has actually been no breakage in that. We have never paid a claim that I am aware of, of any material size under any of our living benefit program, they require you to exhaust, for almost in every circumstances, you have to exhaust your principal before our withdrawal of benefit liabilities would actually cause a cash claim for us. So there is a breakage in terms of the fair value reported on our books, when you see net breakage every quarter that is the gap between the liability and hedge assets. The other breakage you can say is “how much money have we spent on hedging” and “ is there been a rebalancing cost” and kind of a bid-ask, kind of a loss of economic value from the higher volatility. Difficult to put a cost on that but that could usually range anywhere from, in a good scenario, five basis points over the life of the hedging and in a real volatile hedging scenario that could be 10 to 15 basis or more rebalancing cost over the life of the hedging program. So, certainly there has been a period in the last quarter where __ that were persistent for 10 years, you are definitely will be at the higher end of the trading breakage. Difficult to frame a one version of an answer but hopefully those two or three different versions are helpful to you.

I just want to reinforce, David gave a very comprehensive answer to your question, I mean the way we think about economic loss is really at the end of the day when all liabilities are resolved, does that go against the dot and that is very-very far in to the future. What you are seeing is The Hartford basically following accounting rules to mark everything to the market and David gave you the components to that, says the important distinction that both you and I hope investors get and how we report our liabilities and changes in our liabilities through income.

Your next question comes from Eric Berg

My first question is as regards to the capital losses, you recorded pretax as much capital losses outside of the credit area as you did inside of it , probably half as much but still significant number, $165 million is referenced on page 9 and also in the realized gains page in the supplement. I understand that this is all about hedge ineffectiveness and about certain hedges that do not qualify for hedge accounting but how should we think about these losses, are they economic? Should we ignore them in your opinion, David? How do you think about this because they are running through your P&L so clearly the SEC feels they are meaningful. They are hitting your book value, what is your view on these $165 million and similar charges and previous periods?

Eric, the vast majority of what you saw in the fourth quarter was loss as associated with credit derivative position that is what is recorded in that line and I look at that in two different ways depending on the credit derivative strategy. Portion of that loss is the credit derivative strategies where we did effectively replication trade and took credit risk, very similar to the risk we would take by owning a corporate bond, by assuming credit risk through buying or selling credit derivative and then also getting other fixed income investment associated with it. What you are seeing here is akin to the swing in the fair value of that replicated trade that otherwise would have been reported in AOCI if this had just been a traditional corporate bond. So I look at that as when I look at this as accounting noise is because these reflects a change in fair value. On the other hand I look at the fact that fair value is going to swing a fair bit when credit spreads cap out as they are in the current scenario and we would look for the vast majority of our corporate bond portfolio losses that you are seeing in unrealized loss in AOCI to come back and I would feel the same way about the credit default swaps which tend to be a tenured contract that you see marked in this line. Now on the other hand, there is another strategy and these are roughly half each in terms of the credit derivative loss that you see in that line associated with ownership of index swaps where we basically took the risk of changes in value in some indexes, index associated with commercial mortgages and that is a short term strategy, if we do not decide to roll over the positions in the first half of this year, that will be real economic loss.

Okay, and then I have one business question for Liz; it is actually a follow up to Andrew’s earlier question on group insurance. I notice that you reported 1% year over year premium growth in the quarter, 4% for the year. I tend to look at that number even though it is simple, I do not think it is simplistic in the sense that that is your GAAP revenue or your largest component of the GAAP revenue towards everything else in the revenue section of the P&L. Do you think Liz that the1% and the 4% for the quarter and the year are being held down by being distorted or are those number representative of the said ongoing growth power of the business?

I tend to think of the on growing growth power of the business more in the 4-5% range. So some of that is again two core lines life and disability and we sell some other supplemental products and we see a lot of choppiness in those, so, I see the underlying and we had the IMS business, so some of that is noise, obviously that the business is in a saturated market, we are a very big player in the market. We are number two in both in force and disability, and number three in life and from my new sales perspective as of 9/30 we were number two in both. So, there are big player, huge employers are not being created everyday, but I would say is we still see earnings power probably in that line but maybe higher over time as we continue to manage loss cost price well and gain efficiencies. But in the near term you are looking at a probably a 4-6% kind of runrate over time and you will have some higher or lower depending on some of that noise.

That was great! Actually one more just a quick question, in the past I have asked you about your retirement businesses and it certainly is encouraging and it is noteworthy and encouraging that the assets are growing rapidly, and I understand that you are investing in these businesses with the new wholesalers and spending money in other ways to build out a platform. What sort of timetable can you offer up for the earnings to begin trending upward? They seem in the supplement to be sort of stuck in the low 20’s area, and while I understand that, again this is the ratings, the patterns of earnings is being sort of break to retarded by the investment spending that you are doing. When are we going to get the good stuff, so to speak, the high earnings?

Let me comment on the retirement business. We made some significant investments in the retirement business in 2007, both investments in the technology and infrastructure that supports it, and the three acquisitions that we announced in the fourth quarter. So this is the business that we are very excited about and these have been one of our fastest growing businesses and we expect it to continue to be in the future. What you should expect to see is as we close these three acquisitions, one of which is Tom said is already closed here in the first quarter, then we will be working on integrating all of those acquisitions and bringing these together and we will have doubled the assets we had before, that should give us economies of scale and the ability to invest in the business, while the earnings start to materialize. Our estimate is that the integration will take about two years to fully complete. We got to bring three different platforms together into one platform which is what our intent is. We have not yet finalized which direction we are going with that but we expect to do that by the end of the second quarter, and then we will be moving on the inauguration plan. So my sense is that you will get little impact from these acquisitions for the scale of the business in 2008, and probably most of 2009 as we do the integration and then it should improve the earning levels after that point.

Just to add to that, obviously the long term strategic intent is to make this a big part of our overall portfolio given that it plays right to our sweet spot in terms of capabilities and just looking at the demographic and rounding out the offering that we could bring to the retail financial advisers, so we are investing now but we plan on having retirement plans be a huge part our overall business

It is very clear that you are succeeding in the asset growth areas. So a job well done.

Your next question comes from Mark Finkelstein with Fox-Pitt Kelton Mark Finkelstein – Fox-Pitt Kelton: I just have two quick questions. David on the last call you talked about potentially hedging certain element of SFAS157, knowing that there were some kinds of economic or non economic considerations with that. I am just curious where you at and how should we be thinking about the volatility around results if you do not go down that path going forward.

That it is a good question, short answer is that we are still thinking about it. We continue to refine our understanding of 157 and our implementation of. I think the good news is, it is looking like the implementation of the new 157 model will have an impact on the sensitivity of the liability to market changes versus what it was under 133, but perhaps not as much, so that takes a little bit of the urgency off to make wholesale changes. But we are still on about the same analysis that we were before, which is to get that done in the first quarter or so. Operator we have time for one more question. Is Paul Newsome still on the line?

That was the last question

Well, I am going to bring this call to a close. We are please to report the record year for 2007. As I mentioned to the core earnings exceeded $3.5 billion and our return on equity has exceeded 15% this year on the net income basis and our capital position in an excellent shape. And I know 2008 will bring some market related challenges. We certainly look forward to meeting those challenges and continue to execute well in all of our businesses. I want to thank everybody for joining us on the call today.

That concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.