Yep, she should fit right into the modern business model @ AIG….take the severence and leave…its how CEOs get by now-a-days. Of course, it may leave the employees holding the bag, but oh well…on to the next job.
she came from the utility industry, and the only thing utility companies do now adays is ‘cut costs’ by laying people off, they don’t worry about things like infrastructure upkeep or service. first act as CEO of safeco was to lay off a bunch of people, lower expenses, and she bacame the darling of wall street. she’ll figure out some way to lay off people, make the companies look profitable, and take $.50 on the dollar for the firms she’s peddlling. not much ‘skill’ required to do that….
Safeco was once the lead carrier in our office, but they seemed quite adept at tripping over their own feet. McGavick, the prior CEO that ran it into the ground, did so because of his own control issues and personal interest. Regions and branches couldn’t sneeze without permission, and he thought he could run the whole show from Seattle. Well, I can tell you that the Southeast is different than the Northwest, and McGavick either didn’t know or didn’t care.
When Mikey left Safeco to pursue his political career and they hired Paula, everyone on the planet knew that Safeco was up for sale. Paula is a mercenary. She cleans up balance sheets in order to sell the company. That’s all. And people are just assets to be sold or discarded.
Paula has a job that’s way too big for her and while I don’t like or respect her, it does seem an impossible job. That said, she’s clearly not doing it well. Losing better than sixty billion in a single quarter is hard to do. AIG got too big and way too cocky, and now it’s taking the fall, along with a lot of our tax dollars. That’s the way the cookie crumbles.
I’ll be interested to see if Safeco, in any incarnation, survives as a company that’s worthy of doing business with as a part of Liberty and Montgomery.
If safeco turns out to be anything like Liberty, then they won’t be worth doing business with. Liberty doesn’t know how to run a company much better than AIG does.
She does indeed have a difficult task. The delay in restructuring since the government’s first bailout has gone on too long and causing a huge drop in confidence in AIG as an insurer thereby causing many insuereds to not renew with them. Also, the delay has caused hundreds of key employees to leave the company, some of them taking business with them thereby further weaking the company and reducing its value.
Hindsight is good but it would have been better if the parent AIG had been put in Chapter 11 to begin with and the companies been put under the preservation of a special insurance commissioners preservation committee. That way the insurers could have been separated from the parent and other none insurance entities, possible keeping the insurance entities in tact and preserving their value until new owners could be found, either by selling or by public offering. The proceeds from these sales or offerings could then have gone to cover the debts (CDS’s) of the parent/non-insurnce entities. Existing stockholders would realize any value over these non-insurance obligations.
Today’s WSJ has an editorial that raises a good question. What caused the “regulatory panic” that made the government think they should step in with billions of bailout money? The inference is that the government’s action was not to benefit AIG and its insurance policyholders and or stockholders but to benefit the beneficiaries and would be beneficiaries of the non-insurance entity doing the Credit Default Swaps. Certain banks, suffering from bad mortgage loans/mortgage loan bonds were relying on these CDS’s to save them from disaster and if AIG defaults on payment of these CDS’s then the banks would fail. Strangely, the exact banks needing the benefit of these AIG entity ADS’s have not been identified. The editorial’s inference is that these banks had friends in government who recommended the AIG bailout thereby enabling their CDS entity to pay billions to some banks, not to protect AIG but to protect the banks. Who was the culprit in government who was able to cause this “regulatory panic”? My guess is Hank Paulsen, President Bush’s last Secretary of Treasury, who came from the investment banking industry and thus had friends and interests there.
The fact is, in retrospect, it would have been better for the insurance idnustry, for the AIG insurance entities and certainly for the people if AIG had been allowed to take the normal course of an insurance company in trouble.
The parent AIG and a non-insurance entity managed to accuulate liabilities of more than the net worth of the entire group. What we have now is a dwindling giant, that owes $150 billion-plus to the people, the value of which is now $50 billion or less and going down each day.
Another note: The appointment of Hank Paulsen, who was easily confirmed as Secretary of Treasurer, may have been President’s Bush’s most un-heroic act. Mr. Paulsen is a Democrat who may have used the entire might of the President and the government to save his own interests thereby reeking ruin on the nation, thereby digging a hole for us. Obama is now piling the dirt on us.
Yep, she should fit right into the modern business model @ AIG….take the severence and leave…its how CEOs get by now-a-days. Of course, it may leave the employees holding the bag, but oh well…on to the next job.
she came from the utility industry, and the only thing utility companies do now adays is ‘cut costs’ by laying people off, they don’t worry about things like infrastructure upkeep or service. first act as CEO of safeco was to lay off a bunch of people, lower expenses, and she bacame the darling of wall street. she’ll figure out some way to lay off people, make the companies look profitable, and take $.50 on the dollar for the firms she’s peddlling. not much ‘skill’ required to do that….
Is there a way to get the list of companies that Paula is trying to sell?
Safeco was once the lead carrier in our office, but they seemed quite adept at tripping over their own feet. McGavick, the prior CEO that ran it into the ground, did so because of his own control issues and personal interest. Regions and branches couldn’t sneeze without permission, and he thought he could run the whole show from Seattle. Well, I can tell you that the Southeast is different than the Northwest, and McGavick either didn’t know or didn’t care.
When Mikey left Safeco to pursue his political career and they hired Paula, everyone on the planet knew that Safeco was up for sale. Paula is a mercenary. She cleans up balance sheets in order to sell the company. That’s all. And people are just assets to be sold or discarded.
Paula has a job that’s way too big for her and while I don’t like or respect her, it does seem an impossible job. That said, she’s clearly not doing it well. Losing better than sixty billion in a single quarter is hard to do. AIG got too big and way too cocky, and now it’s taking the fall, along with a lot of our tax dollars. That’s the way the cookie crumbles.
I’ll be interested to see if Safeco, in any incarnation, survives as a company that’s worthy of doing business with as a part of Liberty and Montgomery.
If safeco turns out to be anything like Liberty, then they won’t be worth doing business with. Liberty doesn’t know how to run a company much better than AIG does.
She does indeed have a difficult task. The delay in restructuring since the government’s first bailout has gone on too long and causing a huge drop in confidence in AIG as an insurer thereby causing many insuereds to not renew with them. Also, the delay has caused hundreds of key employees to leave the company, some of them taking business with them thereby further weaking the company and reducing its value.
Hindsight is good but it would have been better if the parent AIG had been put in Chapter 11 to begin with and the companies been put under the preservation of a special insurance commissioners preservation committee. That way the insurers could have been separated from the parent and other none insurance entities, possible keeping the insurance entities in tact and preserving their value until new owners could be found, either by selling or by public offering. The proceeds from these sales or offerings could then have gone to cover the debts (CDS’s) of the parent/non-insurnce entities. Existing stockholders would realize any value over these non-insurance obligations.
Today’s WSJ has an editorial that raises a good question. What caused the “regulatory panic” that made the government think they should step in with billions of bailout money? The inference is that the government’s action was not to benefit AIG and its insurance policyholders and or stockholders but to benefit the beneficiaries and would be beneficiaries of the non-insurance entity doing the Credit Default Swaps. Certain banks, suffering from bad mortgage loans/mortgage loan bonds were relying on these CDS’s to save them from disaster and if AIG defaults on payment of these CDS’s then the banks would fail. Strangely, the exact banks needing the benefit of these AIG entity ADS’s have not been identified. The editorial’s inference is that these banks had friends in government who recommended the AIG bailout thereby enabling their CDS entity to pay billions to some banks, not to protect AIG but to protect the banks. Who was the culprit in government who was able to cause this “regulatory panic”? My guess is Hank Paulsen, President Bush’s last Secretary of Treasury, who came from the investment banking industry and thus had friends and interests there.
The fact is, in retrospect, it would have been better for the insurance idnustry, for the AIG insurance entities and certainly for the people if AIG had been allowed to take the normal course of an insurance company in trouble.
The parent AIG and a non-insurance entity managed to accuulate liabilities of more than the net worth of the entire group. What we have now is a dwindling giant, that owes $150 billion-plus to the people, the value of which is now $50 billion or less and going down each day.
Another note: The appointment of Hank Paulsen, who was easily confirmed as Secretary of Treasurer, may have been President’s Bush’s most un-heroic act. Mr. Paulsen is a Democrat who may have used the entire might of the President and the government to save his own interests thereby reeking ruin on the nation, thereby digging a hole for us. Obama is now piling the dirt on us.