For those at AIG who don’t enjoy late August at their Croatian villa, the pay czar will be getting back to you soon about how much closer you’ll be to that measuring stick. Threatening Andrew Cuomo may be enough to make the guy at the top the ten million dollar man, but the company is currently fighting tooth and nail to make sure less senior pugilists get their fair share as well. The stakes are high here and Ken Feinberg better get it right.
Don’t think that $180 billion in bailout funds gives KF the right to short change the worker bees in the AIG hive. We’re not in that dire economic state where rising unemployment is only mildly slowed down by trillions in economic stimulus. No, we’re way past that. Larry Summers said so, and if you think people at AIG won’t hit one of those many bids away on the job front, you’re living in a different reality.

“It’s counterproductive,” one AIG insider said. “To have their pay curtailed below market levels is going to prompt some of them to leave.”

So be careful Mr. Feinberg. You run the risk of chasing people concerned with short-term compensation issues out of AIG. You wouldn’t want to do that now, would you?
US pay tsar gets tough over AIG packages [FT]