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Have you ever had a boss who fought hard for you?
Maybe you liked him and maybe you didn't. But you respected him. He was the unreasonable, demanding guy. He was arrogant, perhaps erratic. But he fought for you, fought for your job and fought for the company when it mattered most.
If you ever had that boss, then you should understand what AIG CEO Robert Benmosche is doing. He is the boss fighting for your $90 billion investment in AIG.
Last week, Benmosche was quitting because the Treasury's meddling with pay was dooming AIG to failure. By this afternoon, he was “totally committed to leading AIG” and proud to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with AIG's employees to “restore our company.”
We don't yet know what happened between Benmosche, the AIG board and Treasury over the past week. But here's what I do know: Benmosche is exactly the CEO that I want for my investment in AIG. That man knows how to fight.
Don't get me wrong. I can see why many folks may be outraged by Benmosche. He may run AIG at the behest of the American people, but he almost certainly doesn't care what you think.
He gets paid $10.5 million a year. He's referred to his overseers as “crazies down in Washington.” And he likes living large at his giant Croatian villa and vineyard.
And Benmosche can't say that he didn't have fair warning before he took the CEO job. A big tussle with the Treasury over pay was inevitable. Remember the huge Congressional brouhaha over AIG bonuses in March? That's why Ken Feinberg, Obama's pay czar, was appointed in June.
So what's with Benmosche recent resignation threat? Is he just a rich corporate cry-baby? Or is he a clever CEO negotiating with the Treasury and doing whatever he can to give AIG a shot of success?
It's hard to say, but I'll go with the latter. Just look at what he's done so far at AIG. At every turn, he has loudly defended AIG's people and its businesses. He's refused to sell off assets on the cheap. And he's slowly rebuilding the confidence and pluck that AIG needs to survive.
Today, AIG's shares may be worth little, but still they have doubled since Benmosche took over.
So can you blame Benmosche for doing whatever he can to keep talent at AIG? He has the power to run a global organization with almost 100,000 employees. But he doesn't have the power to pay his top 100 people a market-driven wage.
Is it any surprise that AIG has already lost more than half of its 25 best-paid executives from last year? Competitors must be laughing as they sift through the resumes of AIG execs.
Critics of AIG will argue that Benmosche is irrelevant as is all this controversy over compensation: AIG is a total disaster that should be wound down as quickly and quietly as possible.
But if that's what the Treasury wants from AIG — then the AIG board should immediately fire Benmosche and hire a faceless bureaucrat who will do what he's told. And then, the Treasury can simply write off our $90 billion investment.
Me? I wouldn't mind a return of some sort. So I'll take a fighter like Benmosche everyday. After all, nobody says I have to like him.
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This guy is a criminal and should be treated as such. AIG has been and currently is run by crooks who have stolen tax payer money. Benmosche should be in jail, and his wealth redistributed to the tax payers of this country.
Middle class U.S. Workers have not had a cost of living raise, let alone a decent merit raise, in over 2 decades. The average merit raise has been 2.5-3.5%. Their salaries have shrunk, slowly and regularly. Workers are forced into foreclosure and moving down, not able to have children, and holding at least one job per adult, usually another part-time, hourly job to survive. The workers are not taking more than 2 weeks vacation, and cannot afford to travel across the U.S., let alone to Croatia. Wall Street executives and financial gamblers are thieves. They are supported by politicians and lawyers who contrive the U.S. legal system to allow their thievery unregulated and unmonitored. The time has come for that to stop. The public and workers have to speak up loudly now. This man’s audacity and greed is alarming. How long ago had AIG milked the U.S. taxpayer for billions in bailouts. there should be no raises, no hidden offshore compensation, no merit increase, only taxable salary on the books for these crooks. It sounds harsh, but we are living an economic war with Main Street against finance, banking, oil, pharmacy, insurance…the big corporate players. No one should be able to take from the U.S. citizen, and then cry about their millions of dollar salaries. I am disgusted to read this article, and hope the citizens revolt through their elected officials, and buying power, against the crimes of economics being waged in our country.
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