That’s a 180º different view from the one that CEO Robert Benmosche has taken in getting AIG back into shape, paying off its government debt and attracting investors to buy into the U.S. Treasury Department's 92% stake by presenting the firm as a global property/casualty carrier and a U.S. seller of life insurance. Mr. Golub doesn’t think this strategy will last. But it does seem like it’s working, doesn’t it? AIG is on the right track. The company has turned around. Debt has been paid, and the stock is on its way up. So why doesn’t Mr. Golub’s support Benmosche’s approach?
Mr. Golub was hired by AIG in 2009 to oversee asset sales and simplify a company that leased planes, held derivatives and insured mortgages. But he clashed with Mr. Benmosche over the divestiture of AIA Group Ltd., AIG's biggest non-U.S. life-insurance unit. Benmosche was focused on Chartis and SunAmerica as the core of the insurer’s nucleus of businesses. So Steve Miller ended up replacing Mr. Golub in July after 11 months as chairman.
“Bob [Benmosche] has a different view of the role of the board than me,” Mr. Golub said. “His was that the board should be more supportive and more agreeable, and ours was that it was an independent board to exercise oversight and not just agree.”
No one at AIG commented on Golub’s remarks on Bloomberg Television.
What do you think? Are the parts greater than what the whole is worth? Or is AIG on the right track?