The AIG Story - Hardcover

Greenberg, Maurice R.; Cunningham, Lawrence A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1118345878 ISBN 13: 9781118345870

Publisher: Wiley, 2013

Synopsis

The AIG Story first chronicles the origins of the company and its relentless pioneering of open markets everywhere in the world from 1970 to 2005. It then explores how the company faltered after it adopted a one-size-fits-all corporate governance structure that turned the company upside down and put it at the center of the 2008 financial crisis where the authorities seized upon it as both scapegoat and solution to the crisis. Produced based on a combination of co-author Hank Greenberg's personal involvement and the craftsmanship and objective writing of Professor Lawrence Cunningham, this book:

• Corrects common misconceptions about AIG that arose due to its role at the center of the financial crisis of 2008.
• Portrays one of the iconic businesses of the twentieth century which developed close relationships with many of the most important world leaders of the period and helped to open markets everywhere.
• Opens new critical perspective on battles with N. Y. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and the 2008 U.S. government seizure of AIG amid the financial crisis.
•  Shares confidential information publicly for the first time.

The AIG Story captures an impressive saga in business history--one of innovation, vision and leadership at a company that was almost destroyed with a few strokes of governmental pens. The AIG Story carries important lessons and implications for the U.S., especially its role in international affairs, its approach to business, its legal system and its handling of financial crises.

About this title

From the Author

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Hank Greenberg: Chairman and CEO of C.V. Starr & Co., which he joined as vice president in 1960, becoming a director in 1965 and Chairman and CEO in 1968.  From 1967 until 2005, he was CEO of American International Group, which grew during that period from a scattered collection of insurance businesses worth about $300 million to the largest insurance company in world history, worth more than $180 billion.  After he left AIG, the company's new leadership embarked on a radical transformation that put the company at the heart of the 2008 financial crisis and nearly destroyed it.  He has been among the most active and influential international business executives in history.

Lawrence Cunningham: the Henry St. George Tucker III Research Professor at George Washington University Law School and Director of GW's Center for Law, Economics and Finance (C-LEAF) in New York.  He is the author of numerous books, including The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America, and articles, some of which are drawn on in The AIG Story on topics such as corporate governance and the financial crisis of 2008.   On Amazon, Cunningham has been ranked one of the top 100 authors in the category of business and investing.

From the Inside Flap

In this gripping read, AIG's legendary CEO of forty years, Hank Greenberg, and corporate governance expert, Lawrence Cunningham, relate the complete, inside story of the rise and near-destruction of AIG. And it is a story extremely well told. Readers are regaled with tales from Maurice R. "Hank" Greenberg's firsthand experience at AIG, combined with Cunningham's additional research and interviews.

Not another self-serving business biography or dry corporate history, The AIG Story is a business adventure. In a well-crafted narrative, it tells the story of Greenberg, the free market visionary who, through his legendary genius for risk management, unsurpassed organizational skill and sheer tenacity, transformed a scattered collection of insurance businesses into American International Group, a global financial colossus with nearly $1 trillion in assets on its balance sheets--and how, in the process, he revolutionized the insurance industry.

At the same time, The AIG Story is a fascinating account of the world's rough ride toward globalization and the triumph of free and open markets over communism, nationalism, protectionism, and isolationism, and the significant role Greenberg and AIG played in that victory.

Integral to the story is the authors' well-informed take on the 2008 global financial crisis and AIG's part in it. Greenberg and Cunningham explain how, in 2005, beset by an army of overzealous lawyers and ambitious politicians--foremost among them, then New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer--AIG was seriously wounded. And Greenberg and Cunningham describe how, three years later, in 2008, in an effort to save Wall Street from its own vices, the U.S. Government seized AIG, using it to funnel staggering amounts of bailout money to Goldman Sachs and other "too-big-to-fail" banks. Through Greenberg's direct involvement and Cunningham's craftsmanship, The AIG Story reveals much about those events which, until now, has been kept hidden from the public.

The only firsthand account of American International Group's rise and near-destruction, The AIG Story is both the compelling chronicle of one of the great business success stories of the twentieth century and a captivating history of the evolution of global capitalism over the past six decades.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1118345878
• ISBN 13: 9781118345870
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368