AIG gets more of your money
 

AIG Gets More Government Bailout Cash - Live Coverage -

I'm sorry this is getting old to me. I don't want to bailout mismanaged companies with my tax dollars.

I know AIG is big and their failure would likely cause massive problems but at some point doesn't the tax payer well dry up?

And WTF! Weekend spa treatments?

Do you think this is a good idea?

What do you think will happen if we pull out of AIG?

Ok, let me set the record straight on the spa thing. It wasn't an "executive retreat", as reported. It was an incentive reward for their independent sales force (ie agents). If you, as an independent agent not employed by AIG, produce a certain amount of business, you get to go on this trip on top of any commissions you earned. Given the venue, I seriously doubt it was refundable even if AIG wanted to cancel it.

Sales people, such as myself, are motivated by things like this. I have never bought a golf ball or paid for a round of golf out of my own pocket despite having played at some of the premier courses in this country. I have skied on these things, driven race cars and been to countless sporting events, inclding 2 Superbowls. Of those, one was with AIG about 5 years ago.

It is as simple as that's the way my professional world works. My company is taking its top (employed) producers to Napa in 2 weeks where we'll drink $300 bottles of wine and eat at one of the best restaurants in the area as a perk for performance. That's what all these are, so people who complain about "their money" being spent on these junkets don't understand sales at all. If you demotivate your sales force by cancelling these kinds of things, you will kill your sales. Period.

Thanks for letting me vent.

yes yes, but you have to admit, comrade, that in the case of aig it was bad theater.
bad theater at a bad time---bad enough that you kinda have to question the judgments involved with letting it go forward.
you'd think that protecting the brand identity would matter, wouldn't you?

in the overall Scheme of Schemes and Idiocy that is at the heart of this multi-variate fiasco, brought to you by those fine fellows in neoliberal-world, this is no more than badly-timed theater.

RB, I still don't see how AIG did anything wrong with going forward with this. If they hadn't done it, they would have forfeited the deposit AND had a bunch of pissed off agents. Someone misnderstood what this was about and tried to make AIG look bad. They suceeded, but only because the intial report was based on a lie and misinformation.

welcome to the machiavellian world of political theater.
motive does not matter if the appearance generated by an action is bad enough.
this is one of those situations where both levels come with compelling arguments---i can entirely accept yours and still maintain mine.
one does not exclude the other.
this is why it's a machiavellian world of political theater--to deal with it, machiavelli counselled that you, as prince, need to in a sense stand outside yourself and think out appearances as a necessary element of strategy, as necessary as motivation.
it isn't easy to do, and most folk would fall down in such a situation.

I thought about the deposit thing.

Are you saying if top agents aren't wined and dined at company expense they won't do their job?

What about when that company expense is at the expense of the tax payers?

I'm simply extremely annoyed with the whole 'bail out' thing, and everything related to it.

Which means that this annoys me..

*Sigh*

Tully: would they stop selling for AIG? No. Definitely not. Would they stop pushing AIG so hard? Maybe. These guys, just like me, will get multiple quotes that are very similar. How do you differentiate if there's little difference between price and coverage? Maybe the commission is different, maybe there's a trip like this or maybe the underwriter is a good friend. All are valid reasons and don't harm the consumer one iota.

One other thing that people have backwards: if AIG (the parent) had gone down, little would have changed with the insurance operations. They were all separately capitalized from each other and the parent. The one entity that wrote the credit coverage went down, and the parent is partially on the hook for that, hence the problem. But if AIG declared bankruptcy, National Union (one of their largest carriers) would have and could have continued writing coverand paying claims. The insurance operations are profitable and most are covered by state guarantee funds if they go out of business. Not that it was ever really a possibility.

On it's face it's annoying, but understanding that it is compesation for a sales force is understandable.

Executive retreats and teambuilding excercises.... not really, I can't see that at all in light of the current events.

Heck our company said they will stop providing free coffee in the pantry. I don't drink coffee, but WTF??????? It's fucking COFFEE!!!!

Well when your company as a whole is unprofitable and so large that the US tax payer is literally forced to bail you out trips and perks like these are, if nothing else, poor PR. Least that's how I see it. Kind of hard to say we lost money last year but we'd have lost more if we didn't hand out Super Bowl tickets. It's not that I don't see or understand what you're saying. But now the tax payers own part of that company I think the perks should be more like- 1st prize is a Cadillac, 2nd prize is a set of steak knives, 3rd prize is you're fired.

But I get what you're saying it's trying to draw in business with these perks and the people getting the perks are not employees. Still hard to swallow on my end.

As for


Never say never. My sister-in-law worked for WaMu for 27years. I'm sure she thought they'd never fold either. She recently went to work one day and was handed a box and given some time to clean out her desk. More recently she's been told she can apply for her old job from the new owner... with a 40% pay cut. Given her company 401K lost 65% of it value she'll probably take it. Several people at the top were not offered to apply, they were just given several million dollars. I'm guessing someone else cleaned out and delivered their personal belongings.

Ok, AIG's problem wasn't that it wasn't profitable - it was and is. Their equipment leasing business alone makes money hand over fist. Most of the insurance entities average in the low 90's for their combined ratios every year (basically income divided claims plus other expenses). That's good for an insrance company. Lexington (the part I deal with most often) sent something out saying that they were paying out $76M in claims A DAY with no problems at all.

The problem came up because the parent didn't have enough liquidity to pay some notes that came due. They couldn't refinance them and had a problem. It had nothing to do with the insrance piece. The day it went down, I was projecting that Berkshire Hathaway (Buffett) or WR Berkeley would step in to buy the insurance pieces, but those deals didn't get done in time (they were apparently in the works, though).

There's a lot to this, but I'm on my handheld and don't feel like explaining spirals, segregated companies and the real nitty-gritty. When I'm home and have time I'll try.

At the end of the day, we are heading into a very rough economic time. If I hear one of my salespeople whining about not getting to play a freebie round of golf or go to Bahamas this year on the company ticket, while others in the firm are holding their breath over a possible pink slip, I'll deck said salesperson myself.

AIG should have cancelled the event so that it stayed out of the media and told its agents to shut up for now.

Well if it was and it is why did the tax payers have to loan them over 100 billion in what amounts to a bail out? Will we get that back? If so will it be with interest?


Please, please do. I can't make head nor tails of most of this bail out. No, not just the AIG part. All I know is now my portion of the national debt just damn near doubled. I pay my bills and I pay my taxes. It rubs me wrong to think I'm bailing out companies who are sending folks to the Ritz Spa and or the freaking Super Bowl. Not to mention sending CEO and CFO out the door with millions. Why am I paying for this?

[sigh] The salesfolks don't work for AIG. They are independent agents. They sell insurance for many companies other than AIG.

And one of the best business truisms I can give you is that a company that cuts back on their sales folks is doomed. Sales is what generates revenue, period.
-----Added 9/10/2008 at 09 : 45 : 35-----
Because, by law, the parent can't take money out of the subsidiaries. That's the case with all insurance companies and it's designed to make sure that all assets used to pay claims are available. Most of the other non-insurance entities don't have the ability to generate the kind of cash that was necessary to solve the problem in time.

Until today, with the new loan, the conventional wisdom in the industry was that as the various assets are sold off, they will generate enough revenue to pay off the initial loan with interest. With the new loan, I don't know enough about how it's going to work and change the deal to tell you if that will still be the case. I think it will, but I need to see the numbers.


Well, I'm not so sure about the rest of the bailout since I don't know enough about it. But AIG is spending money to make money. It is really that simple. Do I think that there will be more incentive trips, no, probably not. But I think that AIG sales are going to suffer slightly for that lack. And in a time where they're going to be suffering already because of the bailout. Many of my clients are actively seeking other options. I talked with the president of Scottsdale Insurance Co. this evening about this, and he sees the same thing going on and lots more opportunities for them. That said, no company sees as much stuff as AIG and they serve a very valuable role in the marketplace.

So the company had money, was making money and continues to make money. It's just making money or has money in subsidiaries that it can't touch or use for the parts of the company that are having trouble with liquidity?

And because of that the US tax payer is forced to step in?


So you think it's possible the tax payer might be paid back... and soon?



Wonder if the amount the sales suffer are equal to or greater the the cost of the incentive trips?

I remember a time when almost everyone got a Christmas bonus and nearly every home had a stay at home mother.

Not talking about firing any salespeople - but the fact is, in markets when people aren't buying much and people are getting the sack, it is irresponsible to be giving away big freebies to salespeople. Not talking about bonuses that are part of a comp plan, but spa retreats and the like are out.

Any salesperson that doesn't understand that isn't worth having, their bad attitude will cause more disruption to the larger workforce.

We are heading into unprecedented times.

Highthief, I have to respectfully disagree. One of the most effective tools a salesman has is his travel & entertainment expense. Now in this case its a bit flipped because the salesmen are the ones being wined and dined, but that's a production incentive. In this case the company is selling to the salespeople to increase production. I have been the target of that dozens of times. It rarely works on me since my experience has always been that steering business always ends badly, but it does work for others.

Here's something else to think about: I can just about guarantee that you would all be horrified by the commission revenue these guys generate. I don't know exactly how if works because these particular agents deal with Life and not Property/Casualty like I do, but we're talking about huge dollars here.

Jazz, agreed.

my mom was a sales person for many years and the perks dried up. all the little give aways that went to the clients to court them. this was anything from tickets to disneyland, theater, sports, to tshirts, beach towels and umbrellas.

But what never got touched was awards for sales targets. trips to the bahamas, hawaii, with all expenses and incidentals paid. get in the "inner circle" of sales and the awards got better.

From what I understand the incentives still stayed in place, but the revenue needed to be generated increased.

theif, you should also know that some sales people work strictly based on commission. I know that some life insurance sales people are like that. So if you want to motivate them, it has to be more than just the pennies of the commission.

comrade jazz, sir: what do you make of the collapse of yamato life overnight?
things are getting curiouser and curiouser.
that much i know.

RB, I really don't know enough about it to comment. None of the few stories I've seen have enough detail for me to figure out what went wrong.

I understand what you are saying but the fact is that you cannot comp salespeople above their comp plan (which in most big companies is pretty generous to begin with) in times of severe fiscal crisis - when no one else, no matter how hard they work, is going to get a bonus and staff are being laid off, the salespeople have to make do with their comp plan. Here it is quite generous for exceeding sales quotas. But it has always been thus here - we have a mature company with a sound philosophy - when times are good, everyone enjoys, when times are hard, everyone cuts back from the top on down.

And in the specific situation discussed, that of AIG, well, the optics were awful.

Perhaps I'll eventually get around to starting a thread about sales and how to be good at it, what it entails and how to deal with sales people when you're not one. That's a big effort, and I don't want to derail this further.

Back to AIG, it looks like the new loan will eat up a portion of the expected returns on some of the assets that are going to be sold. They're still talking about keeping the core insurance piece together, but there are rumblings that some of them may be sold off, which would be extremely interesting when it comes to the insurance marketplace.

If anyone's paying attention, XL, Hartford Life (maybe all of Hartford) and Munich Re all could be going down in the near future. XL went from trading at $40 at the beginnng of the year to under $4 yesterday. They bounced back to $5 today, but that's probably short-lived. They were downgraded from A+ to A at the end of August, and if they drop below A-, they're dead since none of the big agent/brokers will be able to deal with them.