The BIE 100 is a truly groundbreaking project that offers Business Insurance Europe's 15,000 readers unique detail on the senior executives responsible for risk and insurance management at Europe's 100 largest companies ranked by gross revenues.

This project not only compiles details on these companies and their executives, but also profiles several of these individuals to share insights into their risk and insurance management challenges and philosophies with the rest of BIE's readership.

This information will serve to educate and inform the entire European risk management community.

The information gathered on each of the key individuals and their companies' risk and insurance management strategies varies considerably.

This is a reflection of the wide diversity of goals and strategies adopted by these individuals and corporations as they attempt to manage their critical insurable and non-insurable risks.

While the content for each company differs, however, there is a common theme that runs through this guide.

We endeavored to find out who the decision makers are, what kinds of decisions they are making, how and why and with what tools.

We did this because we believe that all our readers will find this insight into risk and insurance management strategy at the highest level extremely valuable as a benchmarking tool and hopefully spark some lively debate and positive change.

But the lists and profiles within these pages are just one part of the BIE 100 project.

Business Insurance Europe will also survey these executives and the wider European risk and insurance management community to develop important information on risk management practices and partners, as well as insights and opinions on the commercial insurance providers and wider trends within the marketplace.

There is no shortage of surveys currently about risk management in Europe and the wider world delivered by key service providers such as brokers, management consultants and market associations.

So what makes this different?

This is different because it is being carried out by the entire BIE reporting team on both an 'on the record' and 'off the record' basis.

It will therefore not only provide our readers with valuable hard, cold facts but more importantly the opinion and analysis that we believe is the core value added by professional publishers to this market.

The detail and color that this survey of Europe's elite risk managers will produce will therefore provide our readers with another fascinating and highly informative read.

Furthermore, Business Insurance Europe and its corporate supporter, XL Insurance Ltd., will host a series of networking events in Europe for the BIE 100 over the coming months.

This will enable this group to further learn from their peers, provide a forum for the exchange of information, share knowledge and strengthen professional ties.

We wish to thank XL Insurance for its support of the BIE 100 project. And, as ever, we would be delighted receive feedback from any of our readers about how useful they found this project and perhaps how it could be improved in future years.

We look forward to hearing from you and hope you enjoy the read.

Editor-Business Insurance Europe

ALadbury@BIEurope.com