Hank’s Dog and Pony Show
Hank Greenberg will testify before the House Oversight Committee about the AIG collapse today at 10 AM.
I’m uncertain that it’ll be useful in unpacking what happened with AIG at all. If Greenberg’s planned testimony from last fall is any indication (he called in sick for an October 7 AIG hearing, but had already submitted his testimony), he will say that the CDS before he left were hedged properly, not in subprime mortgages, and watched closely by management (that is, by him); but all that changed after he was forced out.
AIG’s strategy, accordingly, was to look for opportunities in businesses that benefitted from its AAA rating, strong capital base, risk management skills, as well as the intellectual capital needed to manage such diversification.
That led to the creation of AIGFP in 1987. At that time, the derivative market was small and growing. From the beginning, AIG’s policy was that AIGFP conduct its business on a "hedged" basis – that is, its net profit should stem from the differences between the profit earned from the client and the cost of offsetting or hedging the risk in the market. AIGFP would therefore not be exposed to directional changes in the fixed income, foreign exchange or equity markets.
AIGFP, at that time, reported directly to me and Ed Matthews, Senior Vice Chairman, and later to William Dooley, Senior Vice President, supported by AIG’s credit risk and market risk departments. When I was AIG’s CEO, AIG management closely monitored AIGFP and its risk portfolio. AIGFP was subject to numerous internal risk controls, including credit risk monitoring by several independent units of AIG, review of AIGFP transactions by outside auditors and consultants, and scrutiny by AIGFP’s and AIG’s Boards of Directors. Every new type of transaction or any transaction of size, including most credit default swaps, had to pass review by AIG’s Chief Credit Officer.
[snip]
AIGFP reportedly wrote as many credit default swaps on collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, in the nine months following my departure as it had written in the entire previous seven years combined.
Moreover, unlike what had been true during my tenure, the majority of the credit default swaps that AIGFP wrote in the nine months after I retired were reportedly exposed to sub-prime mortgages. By contrast, only a handful of the credit default swaps written over the entire prior seven years had any sub-prime exposure at all.
