New boss stands firm against selling assets at low prices
AIG boss Robert Benmosche, has said he will rebuild businesses and won’t be rushed by the US government into selling assets at low prices but will repay it and make shareholders money, Bloomberg reports.
“I don’t liquidate things, I build them,” Benmosche said at town hall-style meeting for employees, according to a recording obtained by Bloomberg. “When we get the fair value for those businesses, that’s when we’re going to sell them; it’s not going to be before.”
“We believe we will be able to pay back the government and we hope we will be able to do something for our shareholders as well,” Benmosche said in a Bloomberg Television interview from Croatia, where he has a home.
Shares rose
AIG shares rose $5.66, or 21%, to $32.30 at 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange trading. The had fallen more than 90% in past year.
Benmosche told employees that he “had the luxury to say to the government, I’m not going to rush to do this. I’m appalled at how much pressure has been put on all of you to just sell it no matter what, because the Fed wants out, or the Treasury wants out. If they want out in a hurry, they shouldn’t have come in in the first place.”
“My first charge is to get the company to operate at the level it used to operate, being the world’s best,” he said in the interview on the Peljesac peninsula. “The fact is we owe the U.S. government a lot of money and we are not going to be able to pay it back just by our profits, so we will sell some of the company off but only at the right time at the right price.”
New pay structure
Benmosche told staff he was working to get Kenneth Feinberg, the Obama administration’s special master for executive pay, to approve a new pay and bonus plan for all employees expected within months.
“I want to make sure we all get paid competitively,” he said. “If you shoot the lights out in a given year, we should have enough flexibility to give you a big increase.”
