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 前美国金融保险财团AIG总裁Greenberg被董事会撵走后，立马飞奔中国，穿梭于他30年来苦心精营的中国高层政界商界关系网中，拉开架势与AIG决一雌雄 。。。 |
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Annran
头衔: 海归少校
加入时间: 2005/06/04
文章: 151
来自: U.S.
海归分: 14660
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作者：Annran 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
AIG and Fired Chief Greenberg Cross Paths Again －－ in China
He Seeks Comeback by Using His Network There, as Firm
Tries to Grow Without Him Awkward Moment in Shanghai
By MONICA LANGLEY
SHANGHAI －－ American International Group Chief Executive Martin Sullivan made the rounds at a gathering of multinational CEOs a month ago, meeting Chinese officials －－ some for the first time －－ whom he must cultivate to build up the insurance giant's business here.
But across the room, a different American magnate was holding court, with a large group of Chinese officials he had known for decades. When they saw him, they warmly greeted their old friend －－ AIG's longtime former chief, Maurice "Hank" Greenberg.
People at AIG used to joke that its letters stood for "All Is Greenberg," and in China, that was especially true. The chairman and CEO controlled virtually every facet of AIG's China operation. Now AIG, having ousted him amid accounting probes, is scrambling to get its arms around the Chinese operation. And it is running into an unexpected bidder for Chinese financial business: The 80-year-old Mr. Greenberg himself.
Armed with a $25 billion-plus nest egg at former AIG affiliates he still heads, Mr. Greenberg is holding talks with Chinese companies about joint ventures in financial services, energy, the environment and technology, according to people working with him. He is tapping into a network he built up in three decades of visits here, one that made AIG the sole Western company allowed to sell life insurance on its own in China.
Mr. Greenberg's efforts also represent a chance at redemption following the unceremonious end of his long AIG career this spring. Mr. Greenberg, who has a Hong Kong house and calls China his second home, says, "It's good to be here. The Chinese are very loyal."
AIG's task is to switch China's loyalty from the man to the company. For example, one way Western companies exert influence here is by having their executives serve on advisory panels for government officials. Now AIG is trying to grab the seat its former CEO had on some of the panels. In several cases, it has succeeded.
AIG collects $1.3 billion a year in insurance premiums in China, including Hong Kong. While that is just 2% of AIG's insurance revenue, its take from Chinese premiums would quadruple in five years at the rate they're growing. One reason is the burgeoning commercial sector and middle class in the world's most populous country, both of which need more insurance. Another is an expansion drive by AIG: It plans to get into the credit-card and consumer-finance businesses in China and is moving, for the first time, toward forming joint ventures. Still, it recently had a stumble here as regulators, unhappy with an AIG sales effort, penalized the business by stalling one expansion move.
"I'll do whatever it takes for AIG to continue to succeed here," says AIG's CEO, Mr. Sullivan, who plans another visit to China before year end to cement business and government contacts.
AIG's powerful Chinese base dates back more than eight decades. Cornelius Vander Starr left the U.S. for the Far East to make his fortune and started a predecessor to AIG in Shanghai in 1919. He closed the Chinese operation after the 1949 Communist takeover, moving his base to New York. In 1960, he hired Mr. Greenberg, who adopted his mentor's affection for China.
Taking the reins in 1967, shortly before Mr. Starr's death, Mr. Greenberg made it his mission to get the company back into China. He visited the People's Insurance Co. of China in Beijing in 1975. He recalls thinking, as he watched the Chinese riding bikes and wearing gray Mao suits, that "China couldn't stay isolated in perpetuity." He wanted the company to be ready to pounce when the Chinese market opened.
For the next two decades, as it gradually did, Mr. Greenberg visited several times a year, offering intellectual, financial and political capital. He advised Shanghai's mayor on market-oriented policies. He directed the Starr Foundation, set up after the founder's death, to fund a Children's Hospital in Shanghai. From a Paris antiques dealer, he had the foundation purchase the original carved doors to Beijing's Summer Palace and return them. And when foreign funding dried up after the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising, Mr. Greenberg had AIG help finance a giant Shanghai residential and commercial development.
Along the way, AIG was awarded the only foreign licenses to sell life insurance here －－ it can sell in eight cities －－ and it began to win a significant market share. For example, the Guangzhou branch of AIG's Chinese life-insurance subsidiary, American International Assurance Co., has a 12.9% share in the booming city. More recently, AIG established an unusual alliance that involved taking a nearly 10% stake in the state-owned PICC Property & Casualty Co.
Mr. Greenberg lobbied for China's admittance into the World Trade Organization, which happened in 2001. Mr. Greenberg is a "truly good friend to China," says Long Yong-tu, the former Chinese WTO negotiator. "AIG is known because of Mr. Greenberg."
The symbiotic ties worked brilliantly for AIG, until this spring. That's when AIG's board, faced with multiple investigations of its accounting, removed Mr. Greenberg as CEO. In a tense exchange with directors, he warned that operations abroad, particularly in China, would be doomed without his leadership and high-level contacts. The board, partly in acknowledgment of the need for his advice, initially kept him on as chairman.
In May, New York's attorney general and its insurance department filed a civil suit alleging AIG used questionable maneuvers to boost its financial results. The state decided against seeking criminal charges, but federal prosecutors continue to investigate. AIG has acknowledged financial gimmickry, which it blames on the Greenberg regime, and is in settlement talks with New York authorities. Mr. Greenberg has maintained he did nothing wrong.
Right after losing his CEO post, Mr. Greenberg left for China to accept its prestigious Marco Polo award for his contributions. He stayed at the government's official guesthouse in Beijing. By the time he returned to the U.S. later in March, AIG had forced him out as chairman, too, amid the mounting probes.
In corporate exile, he plotted a comeback. He took an office on Manhattan's Park Avenue and filled it with Chinese artifacts from his old office, after successfully pressing AIG to release them.
Starr Turn
Mr. Greenberg's ouster left him still in charge of three AIG-related entities named for Mr. Starr. Besides the foundation they are Starr International Co., a onetime deferred-pay vehicle for AIG managers, and C.V. Starr & Co., which has an insurance underwriting and brokerage business. Mr. Greenberg, as their chairman, took them over and began using them as his power base.
AIG is fighting his control over Starr International's chief asset －－ roughly $20 billion of AIG shares －－ claiming in federal court that the shares had been set aside for the benefit of AIG. If its suit succeeds, his base would be weakened.
Meantime, Mr. Greenberg lured away a few AIG executives, such as Cesar Zalamea, who had five decades' experience at AIG that included running its Asian investments. Mr. Zalamea put out the word that Mr. Greenberg was interested in investments abroad, especially in Chinese companies.
Mr. Greenberg's initiative left AIG executives in China disconcerted. Ross Matthews, head of AIG's general insurance business in China, called executives to a meeting. He says he told them it was "important to get out to government organizations and other bodies where Mr. Greenberg was involved to let them know AIG is still strong and very much engaged."
He soon heard Mr. Greenberg's footsteps. When he sent Mr. Greenberg an 80th-birthday card, Mr. Matthews says, he got back a card from his old boss saying, "See you in Asia soon."
Mr. Matthews developed an inventory of his ex-boss's contacts. His staff reconstructed Mr. Greenberg's swings through the country to determine which government leaders, regulators and business executives he'd met with over the years.
Then, focusing on key Chinese organizations, AIG began the delicate process of asking them to give to Mr. Sullivan or to Edmund Tse, AIG's senior Chinese official, whatever advisory or membership position they had previously given to Mr. Greenberg. These groups, set up by Chinese officials such as mayors, include foreign business leaders to provide guidance and technical aid. They've become a key way for foreign executives to build relationships with officials who decide on licenses and joint ventures. Two weeks ago, AIG got Mr. Tse to take Mr. Greenberg's place on an international advisory council for Guangdong province.
Regulatory Hiccup
But AIG also has run into some trouble. The Chinese Insurance Regulatory Commission accused its life-insurance subsidiary of selling policies outside its approved turf. AIG pledged to stop and fired the agents involved. Still, the regulator in March forced AIG to withdraw a request to sell group life, health and pension products. The regulator also stalled an AIG application to sell property-and-casualty insurance in more areas.
Mr. Sullivan says that he's working to build relationships with Chinese regulators and hopes in the process to get AIG's plans back on track.
AIG's Chinese executives stepped up efforts to cultivate the middle tier of regulatory and government leaders, people Mr. Greenberg didn't focus on. AIG's top actuary in China, Dominic Lee, assisted regulators with detailed actuarial procedures. Other executives built ties by offering primers on issues such as corporate governance and liability insurance for directors and officers.
One problem: AIG, largely severed from the Starr entities, no longer could seek goodwill in China by directing Starr Foundation grants to Chinese projects such as water-treatment plants. Mr. Greenberg had sent $120 million of Starr money China's way over the years. Mr. Tse recently began paperwork for AIG to form its own charitable foundation.
But Chinese middle managers and agents, unvisited by AIG's new chief for months after the March upheaval, were starting to ask their local bosses how much the new AIG management in New York cared about Asia, according to Mr. Matthews. In early October, Mr. Sullivan came to Hong Kong for the opening of an AIG skyscraper and asked Mr. Tse to assemble employees for him to meet. Mr. Tse got about 1,000 of the rank and file together and Mr. Sullivan spent an hour shaking hands and answering questions.
He returned to China at the end of October. The occasion was a two-day gathering of Chinese officials and about a dozen heads of big multinational companies, including General Motors Corp., DuPont Co. and HSBC Holdings PLC. AIG soon found out Mr. Greenberg would also be there －－ as a keynote speaker.
The first day, Messrs. Greenberg and Sullivan each paid a visit to Shanghai's mayor, Han Zheng. The mayor thanked Mr. Greenberg for his "very important contributions." Mr. Greenberg said he planned to make more investments in China. He introduced himself at the conference as the chairman of C.V. Starr.
Mr. Sullivan began his meeting with the mayor on a light note －－ offering to sell him an insurance policy －－ but then made a real offer: AIG would establish its general-insurance headquarters for China in Shanghai. Mr. Han calls this "solid proof" of AIG's continuing commitment to China.
When Mr. Sullivan arrived for the second day of the conference, he headed straight for his old boss, saying, "Good morning, sir." They shook hands, as Mr. Greenberg whispered about still having business to work out between them. Mr. Sullivan didn't stay to chat. Other AIG executives quickly ushered him away to introduce him to Chinese officials.
At another point, Mr. Greenberg greeted Mr. Tse and said they needed to talk. Politely but promptly, however, Mr. Tse scurried to the side of his new boss, Mr. Sullivan. Mr. Tse says the two sides can't converse like old times －－ "we're suing each other."
Karen Hu, head of AIG's general-insurance arm in Shanghai, whom Mr. Greenberg hired 15 years ago, embraced her old boss. She barely spoke －－ flooded, she says, with conflicting loyalties －－ and later had a private cry. But within minutes she had her new boss, Mr. Sullivan, chatting with a Chinese official.
Seeing all of AIG's top executives and his former Chinese team reporting to the new AIG CEO, Mr. Greenberg said, was "strange. I miss them."
Mr. Sullivan was upbeat after the event, saying he had made "good progress" with the Chinese. The AIG chief is planning another China trip shortly. Still, Mr. Greenberg, despite a tarnished reputation back home, remains golden to many in China. Mr. Long, the former WTO negotiator for China, says, "AIG will have to double its efforts without Mr. Greenberg."
作者：Annran 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
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 前美国金融保险财团AIG总裁Greenberg被董事会撵走后，立马飞奔中国，穿梭于他30年来苦心精营的中国高层政界商界关系网中，拉开架势与AIG决一雌雄 。。。 -- Annran - (13070 Byte) 2005-12-02 周五, 12:59 (1708 reads)
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