Did AIG Bonuses Really Go To ‘Best And Brightest’ Talent?
“We cannot attract and retain the best and the brightest talent to lead and staff the A.I.G. businesses — which are now being operated principally on behalf of American taxpayers — if employees believe their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the U.S. Treasury.”
-Former AIG chief executive officer Edward M. Liddy, in a March 14 letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner
Remember this justification by American International Group (AIG) executives for the issuance of bonuses? They argued that “retention pay,” as they called it, was necessary to keep “the best and the brightest talent” from leaving.
Apparently, this applies to kitchen assistants and file administrators as well.
From the CNBC website this morning:
AIG paid retention bonuses totaling more than $168 million to a wide array of employees in its financial products unit, including an assistant in a kitchen, the Financial Times reported Wednesday, citing a government report to be released later in the day.
The report was prepared by Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the government’s troubled asset relief program (TARP).
About 400 employees at AIG Financial Products shared more than $168 million between December 2008 and March 2009, after AIG received bailout money from the government, the newspaper reported.
That included a cash retention bonus of $7,700 for a kitchen assistant, $700 for a “file administrator,” according to the FT. Senior executives took home bonuses of up to $4 million.
The financial products unit is scheduled to be awarded another $198 million in retention bonuses next March…
Worth The $7,700
(Chef From South Park)
Sources:
“A.I.G. Planning Huge Bonuses After $170 Billion Bailout”
Edmund L. Andrews, Peter Baker
New York Times, March 15, 2009
“AIG Paid Kitchen Assistant $7,700 Retention Bonus”
CNBC, October 14, 2009
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