New York Magazine Benmosche Feature Offers Insight into CEO's Thoughts on Bailout, Government and Life in General

Whether talking about who he supports for president, what he thinks of former American International Group CEO Ed Liddy's appearance before Congress, or the circumstances that led him to accept leadership of the bailed-out insurance giant after Liddy stepped down, AIG CEO Bob Benmosche has a unique and direct way of communicating his thoughts.

In the current issue of New York magazine, writer Jessica Pressler offers a compelling look at Benmosche's transition from a retirement spent tending his vineyard in Dubrovnik, Croatia to becoming CEO of AIG at a time when both the company and the government were taking a beating over the bailout in the court of public opinion. Pressler's account of the events includes candid interviews from many of the players involved in the transition, most importantly Benmosche himself.

The feature offers a first-person narrative of the writer's experience as she spent four days in Croatia listening to the AIG exec's take on issues related and unrelated to the re-emergence of AIG. The end result is a nine-page feature that produces quotes such as this one on Benmosche's view of early efforts made to rescue AIG from itself: “Say you're sitting there, you have gangrene. And I don't have any instruments. All I have is an ax. And I've gotta grab the ax and cut that sucker off. But the ax is dull. And it makes a mess. That's what they did, in the beginning. They whacked that sucker off. And they kept hacking.”

To read the full feature, see the New York magazine story, “The Randian and the Bailout“