With due respect to John Gruber, whose work I love, and Philip Greenspun, who I’ve never heard of, AIG has already had a major management change. Eliot Spitzer saw to that in 2005. Those in charge of AIG today were put there by NY’s former governor in 2005.
From an article in the March 27, 2006 issue of Business Week:
At least one AIG board member feels guilty about kicking Greenberg out, saying the ouster was made necessary by Spitzer’s threat to indict the company if the boss stayed in place. (Spitzer’s deputy, Michele Hirshman, denies that such a threat was ever made.) “This is an honest man,” says the board member. “Some money was maybe put in the wrong column, but Hank only cared about AIG.” Attorney Boies, meanwhile, bristles at AIG’s derogatory references to “former” management in its statements. “The former management is current management,” he argues. “All of these people were totally on board with actions they’re now against.”
At another point in the article Hank Greenberg stated that AIG’s Spitzer-placed CEO was providing, “no leadership” and that the firm was being, “run by outside lawyers.” Now it’s been run into the ground.
Would have been nice if those outside lawyers had corrected whatever problems Spitzer was seeing four years ago. Seems to me that they stuck with the status-quo and only changed the pocket the money was going in.