Fallen Giant

Since American Tax Payers now own almost 80% of insurance giant AIG, we turn to the forty-second page of “Fallen Giant: The Amazing Story of Hank Greenberg and the History of AIG” where authors Ronald Shelp & Al Ehrbar, wrote (most emphasis added):

shakers. Luce's friend got great treatment—Starr's is the first profile in the package, and the longest. Even then, journalists recognized that insurance as practiced by AIG was different: "His insurance career has not been the dull, routine-ridden affair that is so typical of this profession in America.

"Were the total assets of Mr. Starr's companies to be tabulated they would seem midgetlike beside those of Metropolitain Life," Fortune wrote. "Buy Mr. Starr's income is fat—perhaps as bigtoday as any U.S. insurance income. This money is earned upon a sociological premise, that the standard of living and hygiene of the Chinese middle class are improving, with a consequent decline in the death rate. Indeed, since Chinese statistics are all but nonexistent, the success of Mr. Starr's American Asiatic Underwriters, and of its various subsidiaries, is perhaps the best available proof that the death-rate decline in China is a reality."

The article observed that Starr had never bothered to become proficient in Chinese, but his knowledge of China was encyclopedic, and he was famed in the foreign community for his uncanny ability to work with and through the Chinese people. Fortune explained he was expelled from the Rotary Club for speaking his mind. There is no record of what he said but I would wager it was his pro-Chinese stance, either his belief in their integrity and honesty or his conviction of foreign concessions would revert to the Chinese. In any case, his expulsion probably became a badge of honor to Neil Starr.

Fortune called him Shanghai's most bullish tai-pan. "But like many of his modern associates, he is bullish in finance rather than in goods." Interestingly, the article describes an insurance operation with one characteristic that became a hallmark of AIG under Greenberg: "His operations form a vast and intricate web, the outer limits of which no one knows."

The article concluded: "His is a machine-gun mind, tactful at times, but often tough. At the psychological moment he will thrust out his jaw, which, with his glasses, is the most prominent feature of his face. He is forever on the go—Shanghai to New York, New York to London, London to Singapore. He goes with, and in quest of, ideas, talks insurance everywhere, spreads his interests out through Asia.... In his rare periods of quiescene he lives with a maiden aunt on the eighth floor of the North China Building, No. 17, The Bund, where Asia Life and American Asiatic are also housed. He belongs to the usual Shanghai clubs, dines outs, drinks

More information about “Fallen Giant: The Amazing Story of Hank Greenberg and the History of AIG” (and the book itself) is available from:

• Amazon.com
• Powell's Books
• Barnes & Noble

(John Wiley & Sons, October 2006. Hardcover, 228 pages. ISBN: 047191696X; EAN: 9780471916963.)