Liddy Letter: AIG Plans To Award Bonuses Even If Taken Over By US

Reposted from Huffingtonpost.com, via Demeter over at SMW.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/02/liddy-letter-aig-plans-to_n_195225.html

Even if the U.S. government were to entirely take over American International Group, company executives would still be able to collect bonuses at taxpayer expense, according to a letter from AIG CEO Ed Liddy to employees disclosed in the company's recent SEC report.

"As this special award is being made to a very select group of executives, I ask that you treat it as confidential," wrote Liddy. The letter is dated less than a week after the government first bailed the company out.

(snip)

Some of those in line to get bonuses have family in the right places, according to the filing. The daughter of top executive Edmund Tse, Ada K.H. Tse, is president and CEO of AIG Global Investment Corp. (Asia) Ltd. In 2008, she pocketed $400,000 in "retention awards" and $250,000 in a year-end bonus. She will be "eligible to receive an additional amount that has not yet been approved. Ms. Tse also will be eligible for retention payments in 2009 in the amount of approximately $600,000," reads the report.

(snip)

Liddy promised there was more to come. "I fully recognize the devastating loss of personal wealth you've suffered, and pledge to you my personal commitment to provide an opportunity for substantial wealth creation through a combination of cash and equity awards in the coming months and years," he wrote in the letter to employees outlining the bonus policy.

LIDDY'S MEMO AT LINK

and their shareholders.

I have worked for 2 major corporations - and that is certainly their mission.

Senators and congressmen are more supportive of corporations and corporate interests than their constituents. It is a rare representative of the people that is not "in their pocket", imho.

Get a rope!
I feel so bad about your devastating loss of personal wealth
:sarcasm:
:nopity: :nopity: :nopity: :nopity: :nopity: :nopity: :nopity:
I got a bonus for him: 20 years in a max security prison for cheating the taxpayers

The real outrage is that there is no effort to prohibit them at ALL companies.

"I fully recognize the devastating loss of personal wealth you've suffered, and pledge to you my personal commitment to provide an opportunity for substantial wealth creation through a combination of cash and equity awards in the coming months and years," he wrote in the letter to employees outlining the bonus policy.

I think 'devastating loss of personal wealth' better describes people with foreclosed houses, lost jobs, and lost pensions.

If you look at his comment, and replace the executives with average groups in the above sentence. It suddenly makes lots of sense.

So what is the difference between his comment and my comment with the replaced 'you'?

Determining who matters and who does not. Now as a CEO, it is just his employees that matter, although it should also be stock holders, it sort of makes sense within the rules of the system.

But if you look at it from an unbiased opinion the key work becomes 'devastating loss' and determining who is really hurt more, the person with a little that losses everything. or the person with millions, that losses some. And looking at the actions to see if the person themselves caused the loss, or if someone else did. Hard to blame a pension plan holder for losses from a system that has taken billions in bonuses by 'creating wealth' for years, while the person with the pension worked to add a few dollars each year.

If the people getting the bonuses were homeless, without medical care, and facing the possibility of having to work at minimum wage jobs till they are 75, He might have a point.

Maybe they should be in that position? That is a tempting idea. Ok I agree that was not nice. I understand the desire to be financially secure some day, so that might be hypocritical, to immediately assume they should be put in the place of those they have lived off of for many years. There is probably some middle ground in that thought however.

But I'm sure that many, like me, were thinking the same thing as we read the excerpt of the letter.

:hi:

that their actions will be allowed or tolerated, or 'put up with'. There are many possibilities.

However it is a sort of a mirror to what we allowed to become the system we chose to live in. There may be other choices of different ways to manage things.