- Image via Wikipedia
Less than a month ago I predicted we’d begin to see a slow exodus of executives from banks being hyper-regulated by the Obama administration:
“It will be interesting to see if there’s an exodus of executive talent at these companies. I’m guessing it won’t happen en masse but if you look over the next two years, I’ll bet we see over 50% of these top 25 leaving these companies.”
My reasoning was that slashing people’s pay by 50% while forcing them to deal with huge government intervention into their business is not a recipe for retention
“Now, if I’m a top executive at XYZ company and my pay just got cut by 50%, my thought is, polish up the resume. Find some other sucker to get paid half to deal with the government all day.”
Well, it looks like Robert Benmosche, the new CEO of AIG, feels the same way.
“The Wall Street Journal reported online late Tuesday that Benmosche told AIG’s board he was ‘done’ with the job”
and
“According to the people cited by the Journal, the former MetLife CEO is frustrated with the constraints of leading a company majority-owned by the government. The newspaper said Benmosche has complained to AIG’s board about the outcome of the Treasury Department’s pay review which slashed pay for a number of AIG executives by 91 percent from 2008.”
- Image via The American
So Obama thought he could cut pay by 90% AND try to micromanage private industry with no unintended consequences?
Boy, you’d think he’d never held a real job before.
Oh wait.
