Buried toward the end of an article in Business Week about the unraveling of AIG, the insurance giant, is the name Eli Broad.
Over the course of the spring, the stock fell, and by June criticism was getting closer to home. That’s when former AIG director Eli Broad, and two prominent investors—Shelby Davis of Davis Selected Advisers and Bill Miller of Legg Mason (LM)—sent a letter asking the board to name an interim CEO to replace Martin Sullivan, while a search committee found a new leader for New York-based AIG.
Broad has been mentioned on this blog frequently. He is the money behind the Broad Prize for schools who follow a so-called business model. Eli is the money (Bill Gates is also a funder) behind ED ’08, an organization which wanted to push the corporate education agenda in the presidential campaign.
A more pointed description of how Eli Broad fits into the current Wall Street collapse and AIG can be found at my brother’s blog Small Talk.
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention another AIG director, Eli Broad, who’s been pushing his business model on public education. Maybe AIG could win the Broad Prize for management.
When my colleagues gathered around the table in the teachers’ lounge for lunch today, not many were familiar with Eli Broad or AIG. But when they discovered that VALIC is a subsidiary of the floundering AIG, their eyes opened wide. VALIC is one of the 10 annuity companies approved for payroll deduction by our district. Many teachers have their entire pensions in VALIC.
Suddenly Wall Street doesn’t seem so far away.
Fred Klonsky 