American International Group Inc (NYSE:AIG) President and CEO Robert Benmosche spoke with FOX Business Network’s (FBN) Maria Bartiromo about how the company is doing and about American International Group Inc (NYSE:AIG)’s succession plan. When asked how he would characterize business, Benmosche said, “I think we clearly are on our way up. And I think we have a very strong foundation of our business. What we are working hard this year, because succession is clearly something we all have to deal with, starting with me, and so we want to make sure that what we have done is sustainable.” He went on to discuss whether his successor will come from inside or outside the company, saying, “the board’s going to have to make that decision. They’re spending a lot of time evaluating internal candidates.”
Excerpts from the interview are below.
On how he would characterize business:
“I think we clearly are on our way up. And I think we have a very strong foundation of our business. What we are working hard this year, because succession is clearly something we all have to deal with, starting with me, and so we want to make sure that what we have done is sustainable. And that has been the effort of the management team last year. And we finished the year in pretty good stead. We are continuing to focus on 2014, making sure that we continue to develop the leadership, the team, the company, making sure what we have will be sustainable well into the future.”
On whether his successor will come from inside or outside the company:
“The board’s going to have to make that decision. They’re spending a lot of time evaluating internal candidates. I’m sure at the time they will be ready to think through when they want to time this succession announcement. They do not have to, but they really should make sure they have done an internal and external scan to make sure the best candidate is going to take American International Group Inc (NYSE:AIG) to the next level…look, there’s no question this is still — for all that was simplified, this is a very large, complex company. And so supporting whoever they consider a CEO, is able to understand the complexity, the complexity of our risk management capability that we now have and thinking about how we can take that to a different level. So it’s not a simple business. It’s simplified.”
