Gerry Pasciucco at AIG Financial Products

Gerry Pasciucco was appointed to lead American International Group's Financial Products (AIGFP) group after the government bailout of AIG in 2008 and charged with the task of shutting down the division while minimizing the government's losses. AIGFP's failed trades had threatened to bring down the entire company, and the government had responded by loaning AIG $182 billion in exchange for 79.9% of the company, because it feared that AIG's failure could trigger the collapse of the entire global financial system. Several months into his tenure, the division paid large retention bonuses to all of its professionals according to a contract negotiated before he joined AIGFP. These bonuses were seen by the public as going to the very people whose mistakes resulted in the need for a bailout in the first place and resulted in an unprecedented storm of public outrage, culminating in a Congressional hearing in which AIG's CEO, Ed Liddy, was repeatedly attacked for making the bonus payments. Liddy responded by asking people who had received the largest payments to return the money to the company. Now Pasciucco has to decide how to lead his team through this crisis while grappling with the larger issues of the justice of the retention payments.