Department and bob reached out to her wanting someone to help the story. He loved the way she wrote and i became involved in the peace as well. If needed some outside perspective and i was thrilled by the idea of penetrating this mans mind because i had heard so much about him. She worked for many companies, citibank, citigroup among them and she gratefully admired his leadership. There was a tremendous devotion so finding out the story turned the company around and paid 180 billion that was just too delicious. Host when he decided to take the job which is after the crisis and looked like the company was never going to recover when the board comes to my First Response to them was you must think im crazy but then i thought about it to myself ive got the skills and the obituary went on to say paper typical and a larger than life executive who was also a physical presence not only did he restore by 2012 but also repaid the debt to th their debe american taxpayers and returned to profit as well. Its a remarkable achievement. I was thinking about that even this morning he was the only person who thought that this was possible. The government didnt think that this was going to happen. They were ready to sell it off for spare parts. Parts. The idea that he went a little crazy, you have to be crazy to take this on. He was approached earlier about the job when they chose his predecessor but i think that he really the idea to take this on appealed to him as a guy thats got stuff done. Host what did you think when you met him . Guest the first time i met him, i was immediately struck by what a people person he was if my idea was someone reserve and kind of arrogant and have some level of arrogant account in the opposite he was funny. He wanted his story told obviously in the fact he takes my wife as the first person to tell it, and he wanted it told honestly. He didnt want the story to seem as just someone who was flawless as a human being or executive but who have tremendous desire to tell the American People and correct the record of their perception of the company. So, i immediately liked him. He was the kind of man you ask any question he didnt think about the answer it was just what you saw is what you got. Going back to the charming and handsome you can see all of the charisma. It was an immediate enjoyment. Host tell us about his Early Childhood and how it shaped him. Guest one of the critical moment in his life is at the age of ten he grew up at the catskills. They ran a bar and grill actually and eventually had plans to open th about to land rented out some rooms at the bar and grill and at the age of ten, his father died suddenly of a heart attack and the poignant part of the story was financially anyway is that he left the family with a quarter of a Million Dollars in debt. This was 1953 or so and his mother had no idea what she was going to do. So, this led to the feeling that she was always on intimate terms of debt and they paid back the obligation which she never wavered from and get feedback extraordinarily. The reason that also changed his life is that she had to become intimately involved in their business at a very young age. He was the oldest son and his mother leaned on him very heavily. So that instilled a sense of commitment and responsibility. He was not a perfectly behaved young man that he ha but he hado things his own way and it always worked. He always wanted to make money anmoneyadhesive for his life the motivating factor for what he rd very often was making money. And the value of money was important to him and thats why he always had the job and learned about workers as the sort of groundlevel. There was no trust and no extra boost to get a job so that the time he was in the army, he had inculcated a with a strong sense of earning a buck. Host there are two that stood out to me. Guest they own a motel in monticello new york and they would sometimes work behind the desk. One day he was behind the desk in a couple came up and asked about a room and he proceeded to describe the options they had for what they could rent for and what the price was and after the transaction was done, his mother was furious with him and he said whats the matter and she said you didnt give them the pen. She said when they are asking about the room, describe what you want them to rent a. Just give them the pen. And understand that the transaction on the saleswise. You have to effectuate the sale and make it happen. Host the other one you got a better job . No. Talk about how that shaped his philosophy and the idea that you lived they cant you were dealt. Guest you play the hand is dealt and its important if you find something better, do that. But for the time being, her philosophy always was whatever is available to you now is what you have to go for. That was essential to him and it plays out later in his career. He was always on the verge of another job, something that possibly he wasnt even perfectly qualified for. But he knew he had to take the lead and go for it because thats where it was being dealt. Host be far less gleaned from the life in business with an emphasis as much on the wife part of the business. Talk about that a little bit because i think this day and age has approached in his training were interesting. Guest he had no particular interest in schooling. For high school, he was sent, he worked actually at a New York Military Academy one year ahead of donald trump at the school. He didnt do particularly well grade wise however in college with the university but he never heard of when they recommended that he go and he decided on his major math because he thought thats what smart people with major in. He had some facilities for numbers but his grades were pitiful he had no interest in studying. But learning wasnt his thing at all. And i think that he respected education. Its just everything that he gleaned wasn wasnt for me buts from the handson experience. Host was interesting today theres a Program People were telling me about which is getting things done and its supposed to help you optimize your time and he describes in the book how did it define him . Guest there is an epitaph in there that says get stuff done. From very early on in his career he was picked as the get stuff done by and that was a remarkable facility that he always had for coming into the situation became able to analyze it and even if he didnt have the skills the job required, finding them. Remember, he came up through observations in the early days of Information Technology and data processing. Its really where he cut his teeth. Its a very challenging situation that required him to figure out something he didnt know before and he knew how to marshal people that he needed to help them figure those things out. They are behind the industry in creating those that remember those are those accounts that became very essential for places like Merrill Lynch and within a short period of time figured out aspects like Marketing Research and things he knew little about going in but found how to buy the people that needed to instruct him. It was just a quick study that way. So that stuff continued on and on through all the jobs he had going into life where he took on this huge responsibility from the taking the Company Public and i think that was a sort of operating talent of pages that got more intense as he got older. Host there are a lot of epitaphs in thepitaph cinderblo. That is very true to how he spoke and it comes through which is a great testament to the writing in th and a book that hd another phrase he describes if theres anything i loathe coming you write it as the business iss person that looks at you with a pasted on smile or nodding and completely saphenous expressions for that but if you can come up with a way to describe and tell me how he thought about it. Guest it was probably one of the reasons i wanted to help him write the book because it was so colorful and so perfect a distillation of everything ive observed over my life and in my work life that i thought here is a man that is sort of a natural philosopher that of course it refers to people but smile at you and nod in agreement and lavish praise on you being the person in charge to make you feel secure and everything youre saying is brilliant but walks away and says what a jerk. We have all met them. Part of his intelligence is that he could snuff that outing people. He knew the first time he met them. It was an amazing sort of intuition that he had. And i was actually thrilled to. The key accepted even to his world and was a badge of honor because he recognized immediately when he was being talked to and not in an honest way. Host he does talk about Emotional Intelligence and cares about employees but he also talks about his own transparency being exactly who he is and he quotes someone saying about him need somebody that will not be afraid to say fu. How do you balance those qualities. We meet a lot of people that are not afraid to say exactly what they think and he seems to have something that prevented that a little bit of . Guest i think its probably buried on the audience. I do think that he was kind of if he was angry he was terrifying. He had a very strong point of view and didnt release the i think he wanted some debate but he wasnt sure of himself and what he wanted t to get into situations that he didnt want challenges that were going to thwart him or change his course and to the point about balancing, he had tremendous charm and i think the key for him to running the country and what was extraordinary about this ability as a leader he understood and i think he truly empathized with the people that knew him and he wanted to feel that and communicate that. I often thought he was more himself in front of a large group of people than he even was oneonone. Something came out of him. There was a performance aspect but it was also very real. I think he loved the idea of taking people into confidence in large groups and they responded to that but the employees felt a. Anybody that works in the organization they know that they are very remote and spares his or her appearances just for the sake of control they wanted the exchanges. There were also moments when he came into the room and told the people that worked for him they were not doing well and have even more power because they wanted to please him. He really wanted him to be happy because they had been happy. It was an exchange. Host from the leadership point of view it is into the account it sounds like you did that but in the end they ultimately wanted it to be his decision. Guest i think that is totally true but thats because especially in the case of aig, he knew what the mission was. He had to shift the mission because there were other people involved in this process as we well. One particularly the chairman of the board. So he had to be a negotiator in that way, but he knew as i said he relied so much on the sins of the value of things and the value of people. And since he knew it so well, he didnt really need a colloquy constantly. He didnt need to have the trust of told him the opposite. I think that drive really did serve him in incredibly well in intuition. Host you had a better understanding but refreshed the audience as to why aig matters. Guest it was the largest in the world. It had been dominated for decades by the legendary leader who had built it into this conglomerate. It is a trillion dollar enterprise that covered every part of the globe and what i knew about it was its adventurousness in what it ensured with kidnapping and military things and all kinds of high risk customers all over the world it really did change the nature of what a Big Insurance Company could do i think and so that was my whole understanding. I didnt know anything about the operations of the company or the workings at all in how byzantine it really was after hank left in the mid20s either zero. So insurance lets face it it isnt the most sexy business on the planet. Host aig in some ways was a very glamorous company. Guest even the name though, aig didnt have much American International group it almost sounds like a james bond movie, the name of the Company Somebody was running, it has that name quality, so i didnt have a great understanding. And i think that was part of the problem that the company had when the dam bursts because i think the American People particularly do with citigroup and Goldman Sachs and lehman brothers, but they didnt know much about this Insurance Company. It had a very spotty public image. Host so it became the poster child, one of the most if not the most hated recipient of the government be allowed into this hundred 87 billion. That the controversy in the financial crisis was the idea that a chunk of the money. In these risky deals that they had done, talk a little bit about how they felt about that. Guest it infuriated him that they were being bailed out at 100 cent 100 cents for the d. It made no sense and he called them vultures. And then additionally, they were all in the building. I mean they were reaping hundreds of millions more in consultative fees. They were all brought in to do studies. There was a huge plan called project destiny that cost untold millions that was supposed to sell off the company very quickly into its contingent part. And that all drove him that. He thought that it was unconscionable they got paid off before the public did. Host its interesting he sounds like he ended up running and its a nice wall street but if he wasnt of wall street and it was an attempt to words the institutions that turned the countrys powerful institutions from mckenzie to the consulting firms to Goldman Sachs that permeates the book. Guest he felt there were some that were more fair than others. He understood the new ones on wall street, but when it came to aig and what he wanted to do, he saw it very blackandwhite. He understood something was amiss but there are only so many fronts you can fight at any one time. Host before we go back to project destiny, talk about who Hank Greenberg was the relationship with him. Guest when bob had been the ceo of metlife in the 90s and in early 2000. , they were competitors and bob have a great admiration. I think that he had Great Respect for what hank did have tig. I think that he thought he was a visionary and knew him just in the same way hank had tremendous respect for bob and thought that he shepherded them through a difficult time so there was a symbiosis connection that they had. Hank left under difficult circumstances. Its a long story but a hank was one of the people that when they were looking for a new leader after the libby resigned committee was one of the people urging the government to look at bob. And they had some meetings over time. Bob respected hank and i think they thought a ig was too big and they came to the conclusion they created something that was unattainable. What he would say is he created a company so huge that only hank understood. So by the time bob came along, he knew that there had to be some sensible reduction in the size of the company and a i think over time he continued to want him as a sort of silent ally to be someone who supported at least but i think that is because bob thought he was a smart businessman. Host said he comes into this company thats on the lifeline from the u. S. Government and is incredibly controversial and is getting blamed for the financial crisis you could even argue a disproportionate share for the crisis. Talk about what he encountered in terms of what was going on when he got there in the widespread hatred towards the employees. Guest mostly because of what was happening in the one small unit that created all the chaos, that financia the financs that was in connecticut and london this was the home of the ceos and the credit default swaps and all that horrible stuff. Those people were the focus of a tremendous amount of american anger particularly because of this issue around the bonuses that they were contractually entitled to. But it played out in the press so there was such an animus that it became a sort of symbol of everything that was wrong. It wasnt that much money considering the billions and billions the government had not invested in aig. It was something in the order of 60 million. I cant remember the number but anyway, it was a focal point for the anger and it got to the point where organized groups went and protested at the homes of the Financial Products executives and workers and there were threats against, Death Threats against people in the company and security people had to be hired. I mean, it was extreme. It was over the top and it got to the point aig took the name of the building. They started creating things like the property and casualtys company that didnt want any association with the name. People wouldnt even know where their id tags anymore. Guest another thing to be wildly angry about, he felt that it was congress and even the president who said the anger and their statements they might even be privately much more conciliatory but publicly they were condemning and using language that just inflamed the hostility and made everybodys job in his opinion harder. The government wanted them to pay back the money and at the same time was telling people it was a disreputable organization that made no sense but it was mostly because he couldnt believe he has an outside amount of sympathy for his own people, but you can understand he felt responsible for these people. Host you said about congress they seemed intent on the sabotage . Guest he would watch as these things would unfold in a congressional hearing about the retreat at the Saint Regis Hotel in california that cost some amount of money but it was a retreat for Sales Promotion that have been organizehad been orgas before any of these things happened and it had nothing to do with the operations of the Financial Products it was an ofe Insurance Division and it became another huge public issue in the idea that they were sending executives to a california resort causing the taxpayers money. As bob would say you have to spend money to make money. So that again it all became a game of whos the devil in portraying the company has somehow corrupt and this made him furious is the word. Host nonetheless he does something pretty remarkabl