A modest proposal, in the interests of full disclosure
AIG is arguing (among other things) that they need to give retention bonuses to their Financial Products Unit to stem the tide of them getting poached.
The NY state Attorney General has subpoenaed AIG for the names of those getting bonuses. As sharply-edged as that is, I think he's ignoring a much more interesting set of names: who's doing all this poaching?
Who's been looking at AIG's Financial Products Unit pretty much causing the entire enterprise to crash and burn spectacularly, and thinking, "I wanna get me some of that before they all get snapped up"? Wouldn't that be the sort of threatened disclosure that could get the most interesting people's attention? Perhaps that even ought to be added to the required items for the 10-Q: you know, consolidated financial statement, current legal proceedings, and a count of how many AIG Financial Products people you've poached in the last quarter. I mean, certainly there must be some good people anywhere that you want to grab, but I'm a good Bayesian, and if a company makes a pattern of viewing AIG's Financial Products Unit as an opportunity to scoop up the sort of talent that will really raise the bar in their office, well, there are rational, systematic ways to factor that into your confidence intervals about their expected performance.
Mind you, I'm not suggesting this just out of petty schadenfreude and bloodthirst, no, really. I'm just thinking sympathetically about all the poor, frustrated short sellers who have been losing their shirts shorting my company's stock. This could be a golden opportunity for them to make all that back!
The NY state Attorney General has subpoenaed AIG for the names of those getting bonuses. As sharply-edged as that is, I think he's ignoring a much more interesting set of names: who's doing all this poaching?
Who's been looking at AIG's Financial Products Unit pretty much causing the entire enterprise to crash and burn spectacularly, and thinking, "I wanna get me some of that before they all get snapped up"? Wouldn't that be the sort of threatened disclosure that could get the most interesting people's attention? Perhaps that even ought to be added to the required items for the 10-Q: you know, consolidated financial statement, current legal proceedings, and a count of how many AIG Financial Products people you've poached in the last quarter. I mean, certainly there must be some good people anywhere that you want to grab, but I'm a good Bayesian, and if a company makes a pattern of viewing AIG's Financial Products Unit as an opportunity to scoop up the sort of talent that will really raise the bar in their office, well, there are rational, systematic ways to factor that into your confidence intervals about their expected performance.
Mind you, I'm not suggesting this just out of petty schadenfreude and bloodthirst, no, really. I'm just thinking sympathetically about all the poor, frustrated short sellers who have been losing their shirts shorting my company's stock. This could be a golden opportunity for them to make all that back!