Early in my time at AIG, which employment you will recall from my posts of August 14 and May 14, I was somehow adjudged worthy (see below) of an all-expenses paid vacation over the weekend with Nancy at the estate of the founder, Cornelius Vander Starr. The estate sits on the New York-Connecticut border, so, driving from Delaware, we elided New York City and crossed the Hudson at the Tappan Zee Bridge.
At which point our aging Volvo lit up: literally, every light on the dashboard was solid reddish-orange. It was very colorful and alarming. But the car drove on, maybe delighted by its own lights. Eventually they turned themselves off with no further effect. I don’t recall that it ever happened again.
The estate—called Morefar—belied its silly name and was utterly gorgeous. Tennis courts, a dining room, and one of the most beautiful golf courses I’ve ever played. Views of the mountains, beautiful greens and fairways, tricky but not horribly tough, and, the most hilarious touch, sculptures of nymphs in the sand traps! Was Mr. Vander Starr a perv? Probably. Once a year, the legal department ripped up the course and stole everything from the pro shop. (Pretty sure I covered this in a previous post. I recall Rich D’Allesandri, a lawyer from New York, modelling a tee-shirt over his ample stomach.)
Nancy and I took advantage of all of it: we played a round of golf, we went out to dinner off-site on the company’s dime, and we played tennis with Barbara Szanto, an underwriter in our division, and her husband, a really sweet guy, Patrick. We had a fine time with the Szantos. Barbara later divorced him for a big dope whose job it was to woo insurance brokers, which means he played more golf and drank more beer than most people can imagine.
One day, we had lunch at the buffet in the clubhouse. I was gazing at the soup when MRG himself, Maurice R. Greenberg, the CEO of AIG, materialized next to me. At the time, he was one of the 50th richest Americans. He had Big Friends in Washington, and he was famously vicious. His lawyer was the nasty David Boies. Later MRG got into too many regulatory messes to recount and is spending his last days suing everyone.
When AIG lost a large book of business (some poor schmo didn’t pay enough attention to an insurance brokerage, apparently), MRG called in the broker and the AIG personnel responsible and asked the broker what went wrong. It is a measure of MRG’s power that he could summon a broker to his office and question them over a decision that they had made.
The broker described their issues with the lackadaisical AIG personnel, upon which MRG barked, “I hope you’ll give us another chance. We won’t fuck it up next time.” And then turning to the miscreants, said, “Will we.” (My boss, Robert, in reporting on this speculated on a possible answer, raising his hands in a gesture of uncertainty: “Well, Hank, I don’t know what could happen, you know?” MRG’s head would have exploded.)
Another time, our Wilmington CFO and his deputy were called into New York to explain something or other. They were riding up the elevator at 70 Pine with one of Greenberg’s sons, who were involved heavily in the business. The Greenberg kid broke the ominous silence by saying, “You’re lucky. He can only fire you. Me, he can make run the elevators for the rest of my life.”
So now I’m standing next to the tureens, and MRG asks, “What’s the soup?” Thinking I’m standing next to one of the richest and most powerful men in America, I croaked, “Clam chowder.” He backed away: “Too creamy!” MRG was a noted health nut.
The Szantos and we were enjoying a pleasant lunch until I heard someone say, “Phone call for you, Mr. Greenberg.”
“I’ll take it in here,” he said, and I recall that I was at the buffet table and saw him take the phone into the next room. “WHAT?” he yelled into the phone? “What?” I saw him fall into a chair. “No shit!”
My heart actually started beating harder. For him to react this way, the CEO of the largest, perhaps the most profitable of any insurance and financial services company in the world, meant trouble. I thought, multiple catastrophes. Earthquakes in the Tokyo and LA basins. He’s going to leap out of that chair, charge into the buffet room, and shout, “I need a lawyer! You!” pointing at me. “And an underwriter! You!” pointing at Barbara.
He stared into the phone for another few seconds, blinking, and stammered, “Well, have you, have you looked under the hood?”
The other son, Evan Greenberg, couldn’t get his car started, so he was calling Dad to let him know. Later in the weekend, or in the day, whenever Evan could get the car running, he, his wife, and infant child showed up at Morefar, in that same room. Evan’s wife held the infant out to MRG, and soothed, “Go to Poppy,” whereupon the traumatized child let out a terrorized shriek.
It was a lovely weekend. We had fun with Barbara and Patrick, our rooms were kept tidy, the food was excellent, and we were allowed to go to area restaurants on the company’s nickel. Golf, tennis, creamy clam chowder. How did I merit this?
A few weeks earlier, a group that sold accident insurance asked me if they could market to a certain customer list of summer camps. I looked at the agreement that they had had with their broker and said yes. I was wrong. They spent $40,000 in marketing expenses only to have the broker scream and tear its hair out over such misappropriation. I looked back at the old agreement, which probably wasn’t signed (none of them were at AIG). There it was, in the termination provision; the broker owned the client list. What the hell. In software contracts, that’s under “Ownership” or something similar. To put such a provision under “Termination” made no sense to my software lawyer’s mind. Sadly I was now an insurance lawyer.
All hell broke loose. My boss’s boss got involved. Sherman called me, and I figured I was getting fired. As I was on the phone with Sherman, my boss, Robert, ran into my office and made a gesture like, don’t say anything, don’t get mad. I said, “Sherman, it’s the worst mistake I’ve ever made. I just fucked up.”
He said that the good news was that the highest-up marketing guy, nominally in charge of this—such a collision of silos!—apparently hadn’t heard of me. Then he said, “If that’s the worst thing you’ve ever done, I wouldn’t worry about it.” God bless you, Sherman Sitrin. I thank him for his forbearance to this day. Not to mention Robert’s. The abuse he had to endure from the broker!
A few weeks later, our president, Bob O’Connell, was in Wilmington—his usual office was in New York. Robert was out of town, so Bob asked me to come by his office to talk about a few matters. There was a subpoena that I tried to say that our recipient had handled OK, but Bob thought he ought to have been faster. Then he held up the letter from the broker that demanded that we cease and desist and while we were at it self-immolate, or at least burn to cinders the lawyer who had authorized such vicious cheating. “Has this been resolved?” he asked.
I gulped and said yes. Bob was one of those managers who’d read about how you handle a piece of paper just once, and so he threw it away.
Then he said, “I wanted to tell you. You’ve been chosen as one of the up and coming young business people in the company.”
This was, on the face of it, absurd. I wasn’t young, and I wasn’t a business person.
“So you’ve been selected for an all-expenses paid weekend at Morefar. I hear MRG might be there. You’ll be hearing from MRG’s assistant, Diane.” Our tete-a-tete broke up minutes later and I wandered off in a daze, wondering what the hell happened. Was Bob kidding me? Mocking me? Surely he knew that I had been the cause of the marketing fiasco. I could feel my boss Robert’s ironic touch in this, and he recently admitted his culpability.
A week later, I gained the added cachet of hanging out in the hallway chatting lazily with a couple of colleagues when my assistant answered her phone and then said, “MRG’s assistant, Diane, for you?” I turned into my office and closed the door, just imagining what was happening outside.
I don’t have any idea why they sent me to Morefar. It was simply one of those incomprehensible AIG things, but one can be sure that it had nothing to do with merit on my part. There was one guy who lost $10 million a year and kept being promoted.
Anyway, I really liked Patrick Szanto. MRG, about as much as his grandchild did. Geez, I hope he doesn’t sue me.
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