Boo - Hoo - Not Crying for AIG Stock
AIG's stock is getting crushed today. No tears here. I used to work for a company that was acquired by AIG and soon realized what a messed-up corporation it was. The company I worked for was part of a group of companies that even when combined didn't amount to a rounding error on AIG's financial statement. Part of AIG's dysfunction was Hank Greenberg and the organizational fear of him. Executives at all levels were terrified of him and of the possibility of receiving his wrath. The other part was that executives from New York just were not that smart.

I remember a meeting where a group of AIG life insurance executives came out to pitch AIG's life insurance. Their brilliant plan was to give cheap pens to reps that sold an unachievable amount of AIG insurance. The scheme was laughable as well as insulting and it took six guys to present it. I sold my AIG stock after that meeting at over $90 a share - a price AIG has not seen since. (If a company sent six guys to pitch an uncompetitive product with an unappealing incentive it was a bad harbinger for the whole organization and was not a stock I wanted to own.) At another meeting an AIG sales executive invited reps golfing and then tried to get the reps to pay their own green fees! AIG's inability to value its investments comes as no surprise.