Fallen Giant: The Amazing Story of Hank Greenberg and the History of AIG

by Ronald Kent Shelp, Al Ehrbar

In Fallen Giant, author Ron Shelp—who worked within the AIG organization for more than a decade—sheds light on AIG, the company, and Hank Greenberg, the man. Through in-depth research, candid interviews, and firsthand experiences, Shelp provides a detailed look at how AIG was originally created and reveals how Greenberg’s unrelenting drive to be the best may have led to his untimely departure from AIG.

Genres: Business, Biography, Nonfiction, Finance, History

248 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Cold · Rating 4 out of 5]

17 year-old me wrote a letter that was never saved. It was addressed to some future self. I can't recall the whole thing but, somewhere amidst the teenage angst and anarcho-punk inspired politics, I remember the phrase "I bet you fucking sell out, I know you will.".

Reading a book about an insurance company was me selling out. Well, fuck. The worst thing is, aside from the tiresome corporate gossip about whether C.V Starr wanted kids, I actually enjoyed the most of it, especially the stuff about AIG's relationship with the intelligence agencies and the suitcases of money to ensure foreign licenses. I suppose it makes sense to hide the scandal in plain sight. Anyone mind-numbingly boring enough to read a book about the insurance industry has long since extinguished any sense of outrage and indignation. They just think "an earlier me would have been outraged", turn the page and carry on.

I have arrived as a centrist dad. Alas, I don't even get the joys of fatherhood. Just a profound alienation from the zeitgeist of my time.

[Jkspepper · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good factual information and commentary, but felt it it lacked any real insights, or drama through its story telling. It a bit dry, and only really interesting to those who already had an interested in Hank Greenberg or AIG - for anyone else, not sure what takeaways to be gained.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great subject and insightful angles from first hand experience, but weak editing and confusing timeline structure.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

DID THE "CULT OF GREENBERG" AT AIG LEAD TO ITS DOWNFALL?

Ron Shelp worked at AIG for years. He wrote in the Prologue to this 2006 book, "In writing this book, I hoped to learn what happened at AIG---the place employees call the most exciting organization in the world. Was it (Maurice "Hank") Greenberg's hubris that ultimately led to his downfall or was it a combination of complex reasons and people---the 'perfect storm,' where business meets regulation and political ambition?"

He cites AIG's "odd sense of entitlement," where it occasionally "flouted the rules," and operated as "close to the edge" as it had to in order to achieve its business goals. (Pg. 10) He notes ironically that AIG's fall came after an "apparently modest degree of accounting chicanery." (Pg. 12)

He criticizes the development over the last 30 years of a "cult of Greenberg," which stifled creativity, etc. (Pg. 33-34) He also notes that although CEOs normally want to avoid being named on Fortune magazine's list of "Ten Toughest Bosses in America," Greenberg "was disappointed if he was left off." (Pg. 129)

He wonders why a successful multi-billionaire like Greenberg would risk his reputation and even his freedom with such "modest" fiddling with AIG's reported earnings; why AIG's outside directors would "turn on him so quickly and force him out in such a humiliating way?... Was this a coup...?"; Why did New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer "go after Greenberg with such incredible zeal... and then never charge him with a crime?" (Pg. 155) But ultimately, AIG "de facto admitted everything it was charged with and apologized for it." (Pg. 173)

This is a fascinating chronicle of the rise of AIG, and its eventual "fall"---although it still exists, and is struggling to sell off assets, etc.

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the story of two men. One, with little experience, went to China in the early part of the 20th century and founded an insurance company, the first American company to be founded overseas. The second turned that company, AIG, into a multinational insurance giant before falling from grace thanks to some shady goings-on and an overzealous prosecutor.

A good history of AIG, Cornelius Starr and Hank Greenberg... and some really fascinating stories that border on swashbuckling Bondian adventures -- like the time the company had to hire Kurds to smuggle an executive out of revolutionary Iran.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The interesting story of a company who has sadly been in the news for all the wrong reasons recently. This book predates the bail out of AIG and does not address the issues that have lead to the company's downfall.

While being several hundred pages long it just skims the surface of the many rumours and stories that are told of and about AIG.

[Dc]

Great book about the history of AIG Insurance.

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

I worked in accounting at AIG for years. This is a great book. Pretty historically correct.

[Priyank]

Recommend the 2009/10 edition... Sort of completes the story a bit more... Lets see how it unfolds over the next few years

[The · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is more of a history of AIG before the 2008 blowup, by a sycophant insider.

[Cyanemi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good a little smarmy (maudlin) about Hank Greenberg.

[Lizzie · Rating 2 out of 5]

A mediocre book on multiple levels. It is poorly written and organized, and the ebook appears to have additional material from 2008 spliced into a 2006 original. That makes it difficult, as the author narrates at times in present tense, to align his analysis and opinions against the information available to him at the time, or even to follow which events he is referencing. At other times the author will report information from one interview, directly contradict it with information from another source, and then sort of shrug and move on without providing any context on the relative veracity of the conflicting narratives.

The color of AIG's origins and the life of Neil Starr made the book; from Greenberg's time on the author is too evidently biased for me to put much credence into his work. However, it's valuable as a snapshot of a certain social milieu and mentality that took a major but not killing blow in the recent recession.

I cannot resist one observation- Neil Starr reportedly believed passionately in he product he was selling, (at that time, life insurance as a tool of economic uplift to Chinese nationals just coming out of peasant-level poverty). He made tons of money while providing a valuable product folks wanted and from which they also benefited. How does the ethos of a company move from that model of business success through bold entrepreneurship to the extractive, 'nothing matters but shareholder returns' model? Since the author apparently finds this evolution self-evident and benign, the question is neither posed nor answered.

The other obvious, unasked set of questions is 1) when exactly AIG London started selling credit default swaps insuring arcane mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations, 2) if it started on Greenberg's watch, and, 3) whether the answers to the first two questions would undermine the author's premise of Greenberg's near omniscient business-savvy and his argument that Greenberg's alleged responsibility for the early 2000s cooking of the books was truly harmless and not a signal of deeper troubles.

[Jahde]

I loved this book and the story of CV Starr and Hank Greenberg.