SOURCE: The Hartford Fired One Of Its VPs After He Made Comments About Herbalife In The Wall Street Journal

Reuters/ Lucy Nicholson

Hartford Financial Services Group fired one of its vice presidents last week after he made comments about Herbalife - one of the insurer's clients, a person familiar with the matter tells Business Insider.

William Kelly Jr. was quoted in a short Wall Street Journal article last Tuesday saying that he had "never gotten comfortable with the business model" and that hedge fund manager Bill Ackman was successful in "creating more doubts about how Herbalife makes money."

Kelly gave the quotes to the Journal at hedge fund manager Bill Ackman's latest presentation slamming the company.

The next day he was fired, said the source.

Kelly had been with The Hartford since 2009, his LinkedIn page shows.

We reached out to The Hartford multiple times. They declined our request for comment referring us to a statement in the comments section of the Journal.

"In the above article, Mr. Kelly was speaking on his own behalf, not on behalf of The Hartford," Shannon Lapierre, the head of Hartford's corporate communications, wrote in the comments section at 8:09 a.m. on July 23.