From about 1991-98, I was an Associate General Counsel for several of the subsidiaries of AIG, or American International Group. When I arrived there in 1991, neither I nor much of anyone else had ever heard of it. The conglomerate was little known partly because so much of its business was overseas; I worked for the life insurance companies that sold policies in the U.S., and you’ve never heard of AIG Life or Delaware American Life, right?
AIG had actually started in China, under the leadership of Cornelius Vander Starr, who gets points for his name. He’s buried on the sixth tee at the golf course at Morefar, his enormous and stupidly-named estate an hour or so north of New York City on the Connecticut border. The plaque on the grave has Chinese characters on it. One of my colleagues insisted that they translated as “little boy testicles.” There’s also sculpture in the sand traps, mainly dancing nymphs, so our Cornelius had broad tastes.
As my old friend the poet R.T. Smith would say, “I’m telling you more than I know,” but close enough: at some point, AIG got thrown out of China, possibly when the Communists took over, and the company’s chief, M.R. “Hank” Greenberg (someone else’s nickname, not mine, too corny), also known as MRG, was determined to get back in: That’s a market of over a billion people.
Part of the effort to get back into China was led by a young Chinese lawyer whose first, last, or some other name was Wang. My colleague Michael Gioffre said that Wang was going to have to buy a wheelbarrow to cart away all the cash MRG would give him for getting us back into China.
Once a year, all of the AIG lawyers—over a hundred—would be forced to meet, usually at the founder’s estate. There were meetings, and food, lots of drink, and golf, during which all of the lawyers would steal everything in the pro shop regardless of size, suitability, and especially cost, as it was all free (one year we were admonished not to be so greedy). Once we finished grabbing things, we’d go out and rip up the lovely golf course with our divots and wild, drunken golf cart driving. I think one year Gioffre drove into a pond, but that was before I started work there, so I could be wrong. But someone did.
Of course there were meals, and one day I was at a large table with Wang and a New York-based tax lawyer named Jack Something—let’s call him O’Toole, which is probably close, as he was a New York Irishman, with a nasty temper. Once I called him with a question, and he bit me off saying, “Call me back when you have your facts gelled.”
The poor service people brought dessert. Wang looked at it in dismay and said, “What’s this?”
(Wang, being Chinese, spoke with a heavy accent, but I’m not about to try to reproduce it here, though it makes the story funnier by illustrating the contrast between Wang and O’Toole.)
Jack O’Toole said, “Wang, it’s an apple tart. It’s apple baked in a pasty with cinnamon. It’s very good, a very typical American dessert.”
Wang’s dismay was only amplified: “Why would you do that? Why would you mix apple and cinnamon? That’s no good.”
Jack insisted, “No, Wang, it’s very good. Just try it. It’s a typical American dessert. You’ll like it.”
Wang crossed his arms and sat back, shaking his head. “No good. Why would you mix apple and cinnamon? That’s no good.”
“No, come on, try it, Wang, you’ll like it.” Jack’s face was turning red and he’d put down his fork.
Wang shook his head. “No, it’s no good. Why would you mix apple and cinnamon?”
Jack leaned back, took a deep breath, and said, “Well, you people eat live monkey brains.”
I was sitting next to Wang, with O’Toole on the other side of him, and I was completely frozen: how could this stalemate play out except in flying bloody body parts? But the conversation died.
Wang smiled lightly as if he hadn’t heard and ignored his dessert, his arms folded. I glanced around the table, and everyone was smiling and enjoying his or her dessert. The moment to say something, anything, to O’Toole, had passed.
Then Sherman Silver, who was very high up so it was fortunate that he didn’t hear Wang and O’Toole’s exchange, shook salt all over his apple tart.
O’Toole witnessed him and called across the table, “Sherman, what are you doing? That’s your dessert.”
Sherman shook his head. “Now I won’t be tempted to eat it.”
Wang never did try the dessert, but he got AIG back into China. Later, he made the mistake of incurring a back injury, and they fired his ass. Jack O’Toole, who was a drunk, obnoxious, and clearly a jerk, also got fired, though possibly not at the same time.
AIG was the kind of place where I’d be on the phone in my office and someone would walk in and start talking to me. My clients would tell me that they were going to do something illegal, and if I didn’t like it, well. Where MRG would demand that we get out of the credit life business and then a year later ask why the goddamn hell weren’t we in the credit life business. Where if, as was true of our companies, you didn’t make enough money, MRG would just go out and buy a company that would make more money. Where people left daily for a better job, or found a new job in another part of the company, or got promoted for losing $10 million, or had heart attacks.
This is the kind of clueless place it was: the year before I started, our companies in Delaware gave a holiday party. It was at a hotel and featured some food, lots of alcohol, and music, I suppose. Spouses were not invited. One of the door prizes was a room for the night.
I never understood how AIG stayed in business, much less made so much money.
Then, in 2008…
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