Unwinding at AIG Prompts Pasciucco to Ponder Systemic Failure

Gerry Pasciucco stared out from his fourth-floor office at the hurly-burly of midtown Manhattan’s 48th Street, weighing the riskiest trade of his life. Over a 26- year career, he had risen to managing director at Morgan Stanley and earned a seven-figure-plus pay package. It was October 2008, and Edward Liddy, the new chief executive officer of insurer American International Group Inc., had just asked Pasciucco to head the subsidiary at the vortex of the world financial cataclysm: AIG Financial Products Corp.

The mission: unwind AIGFP’s portfolio of 44,000 often complex, long-dated derivatives with a notional value of $2 trillion, close the unit, then fire what remained of its 428 employees and resign...

Bloomberg: Unwinding at AIG Prompts Pasciucco to Ponder Systemic Failure