Strange days

As CEO Middle East goes to press, contrite AIG executives, some of them at least, are doing the unthinkable: returning their bonuses.

The New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo thinks he can get back, through guilt alone, something like $80m of the $165m handed out to the senior employees who presided over the abject failure of the insurance giant before it was bailed out by the US government to the tune of $180bn of taxpayers’ cash.

Fifteen of the top twenty executives have all handed back the money, sound-tracked by an orchestra of the world’s smallest violins.

General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt refused a bonus altogether. You might wonder why he was even being considered for one, given that since he took over the company in 2001, four days before the 9/11 attacks, the share price of the world’s largest conglomerate has nosedived by over 80 percent.

Indeed, since January 1 this year, the share price is down some 35 percent. You’d think, under normal circumstances, he would have walked the plank some time ago, long before this year cutting the dividend paid to shareholders for the first time since 1938, shortly after saying he wouldn’t.

But then, these aren’t normal circumstances, are they? Incidentally, in the interview you can read what he had to say when CEO Middle East asked him if he would resign.

Visa Inc president Hans Morris is another exclusive interview this month. He says the global economic downturn is just an unwinding, after years of bad practice, and that good times will return again once prices get so cheap that speculators come back to the market.

For him, speculation is everything. But then, he also says, with a straight face, that credit cards are a good way to teach your children to spend money responsibly. What to believe?

These are crazy times.

Damian Reilly is the editor of CEO Middle East.

RELATED LINK: Card sharp, Storm warning

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