Mar 23, 2009 11:16pm
Closing Arguments: AIG Makeover Just Lipstick on a Pig?
EmailThe New York attorney general said earlier tonight that 15 out of the top 20 bonus earners at AIG have returned the payments — worth a combined $30 million. At the same time, the beleaguered company — which has received $170 billion in bailouts — is trying to give itself a makeover — changing its name to AIU Holdings. So tonight, we ask you: Is it worth it? Can the rebranding possibly change the public perception of AIG? Or is the company’s reputation forever marred? Tell us what you think. And follow "Nightline" on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Nightline
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Changing the name wont make all the debt and mistakes go away. It will cost more money to change the name. More money that doesn’t need to be wasted until times are better.
Posted by: Mark Crawford | March 24, 2009, 12:08 am 12:08 am
Sure, waste MORE taxpayer money to change signs on buildings, reprint business cards, change stationary, blah blah blah, more big corporation BS.
Posted by: Jack | March 24, 2009, 12:09 am 12:09 am
Rebranding a company can be very expensive. Just one more example of AIG spending money for the wrong things. When are they going to get their act together?
Posted by: KManfredi | March 24, 2009, 12:10 am 12:10 am
Do they know how much it costs to rebrand a company, that would be a GREAT use of tax payer dollars!
Posted by: slawrence | March 24, 2009, 12:12 am 12:12 am
No one realizes the amount of $$ MONEY $$ it takes just to re-name/re-brand a company! From letterhead, to envelopes, to signs on the doors, stickers, pens, and whatever else that has a company’s name on it!! This can be THOUSANDS $$$. ENOUGH with more WASTE! I dont ask for a bailout for billions, all I need is ten thousand and i can start my own business that will reap 869K a year net… and I cant even get a loan! Will SOMEONE please give me 10k and I will shut up! Maybe I should come up with some kind of scheme instead and ask for BILLIONS. Then i mite actually get approved! ~jay~
Posted by: J.Doogs | March 24, 2009, 12:12 am 12:12 am
I believe that AIG should split its company and keep the AIG name for the Department with the toxic mortgage security insurance products and rename the other portion of the company that is run by more ethical executives.
However, AIG people aren’t very smart if they think that naming the company AIU is going to give themselves enough distance from the name AIG.
If this is the best that the so-called best and brightest can do, I’m buying my plane ticket to New York right now. I would agree to significantly less compensation and I could surely come up with better ideas.
Posted by: sheila | March 24, 2009, 12:14 am 12:14 am
And how much will the rebranding cost? New signage, new brochures and other printed materials, new gold-plated business cards, maybe? Just more unbelievable waste!
Posted by: Cassie | March 24, 2009, 12:14 am 12:14 am
the previous comments have followed my thoughts exactly… a name change will cost a LOT of money… where will that money come from? another bailout? ridiculous!! a name change is not going to change all the mistakes that have been made – only compound them!
Posted by: Peggy Oickle | March 24, 2009, 12:16 am 12:16 am
It won’t change how people feel about AIG right now and how much is it going to cost and who is it going to cost to go around a change all the logos from AIG to AIU Holdings. Wasteful, wasteful, wasteful…..
Posted by: Laura Goolsby | March 24, 2009, 12:16 am 12:16 am
Yeah…no matter how good it looks it’s still a PIG!!! Restructure, pay back the money, and sell it off. So it goes for any normal business that goes tits-up, why should they be any different??? Heard a vicious rumor that AIG handles the Congressional retirement fund, any truth to that??? Hmmmm. Come on AMERICA, Let’s hear from you….the official governmental line is “Hey…we’ll try this and if it doesn’t work, we’ll just try something else. After all, that’s the way government works, trial and error.” In my humble opinion, WHO THE HELL IS RUNNING THIS SHIP ????
Posted by: Nachthexe | March 24, 2009, 12:25 am 12:25 am
Oh what a great idea! I wonder which one of those well educated top executives is getting a BONUS for that one. What this company needs is someone with common sense. I totally understand why this company is in the trouble they are in. Let’s spend more of our taxpayers money to change signs, business cards, and stationary, etc… You go ahead and change your name believe me I WILL NEVER DO BUSINESS WITH YOU. So stop wasting my money and stop sending me your useless mailings I keep getting. Then just end up in the GARBAGE!
Posted by: Tim | March 24, 2009, 12:26 am 12:26 am
As a design student I certainly understand the concept of re-branding, however it seems in this case to be a synonym for bigger waste of money. If they do this they will then be burning taxpayer money to hire a consulting firm, a designer ad naseum.
Once they have spend all that money then they will have to replace every sign on every building. Secretaries will THROW AWAY thousands of reams of letterhead and envelopes; tens of millions of business cards will be wasted and ALL of this will be reordered. AIG sends me 50 pieces of junk mail a year (they have NEVER had the best rate for me); somewhere there are tens of thousands of these babies just waiting to clot up our mailboxes – all will hit the trash and have to be re-printed.
This is their solution? This is just more business as usual to the detriment of our pocketbooks. It is a colossal waste of taxpayer money, and the natural resources consumed to trash and reprint tens of billions of pounds of paper.
This country has a surplus of talented people that need work, executives and new graduates that need work and would jump at the chance and could be held accountable. Get rid of these fat cats; hire some fresh-thinking innovative, hungry kids fresh out of school with a heap of student loans. They be damn glad for the work, will do a far superior job and wont be sniffing around for billions in bonus money they didn’t lift a finger to earn!
Posted by: Kellee Byrd | March 24, 2009, 12:27 am 12:27 am
when the climate of our corprate well being is literally down the tubes, how can the Exec’s of “ANY” Corporation expect to receive a unearned bonus A the same time that they are putting it’s workers out into the unemployment
lines. The greed of this society has gone way too far!!!!!1
Posted by: RJ | March 24, 2009, 12:35 am 12:35 am
If you put lipstick on the AIG PIGxecutives, they are still PIGS. They are so deep in it that you couldn’t wash the stench away with baking soda.
No corporation that received bailout cash should award bonuses to anybody. Every single bonus given by AIG needs to be returned in full IMMEDIATELY! Need somebody with brass balls to file FRAUD charges against the PIGxecutives stealing the bailout money. The name change will not do a thing, the apple is rotten I tell you. WE THE PEOPLE demand the respect we deserve, the return of ethics, and a government thst will PROSECUTE these thiefs operating under a cloud of legalized robery.
Posted by: We The People | March 24, 2009, 12:44 am 12:44 am
Wow! The worm of AIG wants to metamorphasis into a butterfly called AIU!?! The’ll have to cross the street of public opinion and see if they get across safely before lodging in the tree of public confidence.
When AIG officially announces it’s name change, they should run the credits for the list of the Hypocrites who will wear a different mask over the SAME face. AIG… AIU….IOU…oops did I say that out loud?
Posted by: Luis Lozano | March 24, 2009, 12:50 am 12:50 am
Aig and any future re-branding of this company’s name will be indelibly branded on the brains and psyche’s of the American public for years to come. I know of no other way of overcoming this obstacle, but for AIG to restructure, FIRE all the executives involved in this debacle, hire new and trustworthy executives, and to start over no matter how BIG they are. The FED does this with insolvent Banks everyday. Their delusions of grandeur are what got them in this fix to begin with, along with the LICENSE TO STEAL which Congress and the past and present administrations have been so enthusiastic to grant them. Will this be expensive??? HELL YES…but let them do it on their own DIME…They deserve it!!! What do they need to show them this? Crowds of angry villagers bearing TORCHES??? The American people will NEVER look upon this company again with anything but jaded disdain and hatred…
The French and the Russians both fought revolutions over similar indiscretions ["Let them eat cake"] of their leadership and we all know the outcome of these…
Posted by: The Pro From Dlover | March 24, 2009, 1:24 am 1:24 am
My grandfather once told me that “a company’s success or failure is not only based on a companies’ ability to manage their affairs but is also dependant on the amount of integrity that is transparent throughout all levels of management. If a company is unable to run honestly, manage its resources properly, and or puts its profits before the well being of the public it serves then it is a company that deserves to fail.“ It is outrageous that the executives at AIG and other companies like them, who took bail out money and used it for personal gain instead of putting it into the business as was intended. Apparently they have to be given step by step instructions as if they were in kindergarten before they know how to right by the people. It is also apparent by their actions that they have no integrity, no values, and don’t care about the businesses they run. These people should be forced to give back every penny of the bail out money they were given and they fail so be it. If they are able to “trim the fat” and find an honest way to save the businesses, then great let them reinvent themselves. After all is it really worth it to save a business that has proven itself worthy of failure? Just in case you didn’t know the answer, it is NO!
Posted by: AC1615 | March 24, 2009, 1:33 am 1:33 am
Get off AIG’s a**. It was the Democrats in Congress that voted for the porkculas bill that permitted it. AND they didn’t take the time to read the bill.
Posted by: Sluggo | March 24, 2009, 1:51 am 1:51 am
If I were an AIG exec, I would tell Cuomo to blow me.
Posted by: Sluggo | March 24, 2009, 2:00 am 2:00 am
Company should not try to attract public attention, before the company had made any true progress or growth. Name, if not being considered merely as a superficial matter but a natural part of the whole organism, the company & its founder’s will, dream, name would not survive only through a clear management crisis.
Posted by: Yabin Li | March 24, 2009, 2:18 am 2:18 am
Obama has a wife that puts lipstick on her anal lips and walks on her hands. That why she is uglier than your average APE girl
Posted by: yaboo | March 24, 2009, 3:41 am 3:41 am
The only thing that would help the AIG affair would be to break it up into independent segments. This happened to AT&T when it was broken up into the Baby Bells and things came out fine.
By breaking up AIG, it would then not be too big to fail. It would allow the profitable units to start paying us back and would allow us to sell off one or more of the units as appropriate. The toxic part(s) could be allowed to fail with no real damage to anyone.
Posted by: beto | March 24, 2009, 4:16 am 4:16 am
I love playing with myself
Posted by: beto | March 24, 2009, 4:22 am 4:22 am
The question is, by the time they change everything over to the new name, how much is that going to cost?
Posted by: Melanie | March 24, 2009, 5:44 am 5:44 am
Now that the AIG men and women have been branded as thieves, had their families threatened and are now giving back the bonuses wouldn’t now be a dandy time for congress to pass another retroactive tax bill on the executives of freddie mac and fannie mae? After all didn’t that little fiasco cost tax payers something north of 100 billion?
Posted by: david | March 24, 2009, 6:26 am 6:26 am
AIG makeover, is this a free make makeover, as I remeber the company went broke and the american people bailed them out and now they want to “WASTE” more money on a new image, lets see
1. Business sign changed to new name
2. All new persoanlized stationary
3. New business cards for every employee
4. Advertising for new image
this is just the tip of the iceberg, why just fire the idiot that even suggusted this enormaous waste of the “amercian publics money”
Get Real This company could not manage their finaces before , how will they do it with a new image. This is JOKE along with the rest of the stimulus waste, where is my stimulus check, when will I get bailed out? Who is gonna feed me when I go broke from bailing out everyone else?
Posted by: John | March 24, 2009, 10:44 am 10:44 am
I ***STRONGLY AGREE*** with one of the poster in that: AIG is NOT responsible for this fiasco; CONGRESS is responsible for this fiasco. (i.e., CONGRESS wrote the BAILOUT check without which AIG could NOT write the bonus checks.
QUOTE FROM ROSS PEROT ABOUT 15 YEARS AGO: “Every time CONGRESS makes a mistake, you and I –taxpayers– write the check.
Posted by: CharlesPA | March 24, 2009, 9:25 pm 9:25 pm
AIG has already re-named their car insurance branch to 21st Century
Posted by: Meriel | March 25, 2009, 11:26 am 11:26 am
Changing the name is a stupid waste of money. The stupidity of this company’s management continues. Are they going to give themselves big bonuses for changing the name?
Their reputation is marred, but not necessarily forever. They need to start doing some things right and earn a good reputation back. It will take some time and some hard work and long, long hours without bonuses, like the rest of us have always done. Changing their name is a step in the wrong direction.
By the way, if only 30 million of the bonuses have been recovered, you media types need to be vigilant about staying after them to help the government get the rest back. Here is a situation where failed government and failed media can pull together in a team and have a success for a change. Get the bonuses back!
Posted by: Jack of SB | March 28, 2009, 8:55 pm 8:55 pm
failures
Posted by: your mom | April 3, 2009, 4:52 pm 4:52 pm
yur a falyur. dont say nutin if yu cant say nutin gud at awl. falyur.
Posted by: your grandmother | April 3, 2009, 4:55 pm 4:55 pm