AIG released its counterparty list
AIG Moving Forward - list of counterparties and amounts.
So all this was really just to save Goldman Sachs...
They got $12.9 billion from the "Maiden Lane" funds the US set up to launder channel funds rapidly to vulnerable financial institutions.
'course Barclays, Deutsche Bank and Societe General also got a bunch of cash along with the other usual suspects.
It is mildly curious that some of the lists are sorted by amount paid out, and some are not.
Mildly obfuscates the information to those glancing at it.
Information Processing has some more interesting details.
AIG Financial Products, set up 22 years ago.
Paid $3.4 billion in employment compensation to 377 employees this decade.
Headed up by Jospeh Cassano until he resigned last year.
That was probably the other smart thing he did.
Cassano apparently ain't talking to the press
seriously, not even NYT - strange.
"After the quarterly loss of $11.1bn was announced in February, Cassano resigned, taking with him $34m in bonuses (to add to the $280m he'd made in the previous eight years with the firm) and retaining a $1m-a-month consulting role."
Steve wonders how Cassano did - apparently $34 million parachute, on top of $280 million in salary and bonuses over last few years, and a juicy consultancy.
Wonder if the taxpayers are still paying Mr Cassano a million per month for him to provide his expertise to those trying to unwind AIGFPs moronic contracts (apparently not according to a Vanity Fair article).
Mr Cassano is rather shadowy for such an important man.
He made some small donations to Obama, and Dodd, and a local republican congresscritter in Wesport CT.
Interesting WSJ article on the people and history here
"AIG began selling credit-default swaps around 1998. Mr. Gorton's work "helped convince Cassano that these things were only gold, that if anybody paid you to take on these risks, it was free money" because AIG would never have to make payments to cover actual defaults, according to the former senior executive at the unit. However, Mr. Gorton's work didn't address the potential write-downs or collateral payments to trading partners." [Gorton is a Yale Biz Prof, former UPenn Prof]
Cassano came to AIG from Drexel Burnham Lambert, Michael Milken's old place.
Brooklyn College grad - Poli Sci - First Boston Corp. before Drexel Burnham.
First Boston also got caught in the junk bond fiasco and eaten by Credit Suisse.
I wonder who will hire Cassano next.
knew accounting, but not mathematics.
Sounds like Cassano used Gorton's models blindly without understanding the assumptions, and without really understanding the probabilities implied by the pricings.
Also sounds like he did not like being told he was wrong, and hey, nothing went wrong for the first 20 years...
- Log in to post comments
The whole thing sounds like the scene from Blazing Saddles where the new sheriff points his gun at his head and threatens to pull the trigger if the townspeople don't do what he asks.
He made some small donations to ... a local republican congresscritter in Wesport CT.
That would presumably be Shays, who was the last remaining Republican congresscritter from New England (and who lost his reelection bid in November).
http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video…