AIU Holdings: AIG Creates New Name To Avoid PR Disaster

Following up Ryan Grim's report from Congress last week that AIG chief Edward Liddy was looking to change the company's "thoroughly wounded and disgraced" name, it appears as though words are being put into action.

The massive insurance operation will henceforth be known as AIU Holdings, Ltd., a process that began this past weekend with the removal of the large, front-end AIG sign from the its Manhattan office.

According to Reuters:

The signage is outside the company's Water Street offices, around the corner from AIG's Pine Street headquarters, which has long only been marked by an understated brass plaque inscribed "American International Building."

AIG has said it may sell the headquarter building, as part of its drive to raise funds to repay its debt to the U.S. government.

Have a better, more creative name for AIG? Leave it in the comments section.

Comments

[Rapid Ray]

04:42 AM on 03/26/2009

Have you noticed that NO ONE is calling them "AIU"?

NOT ONCE have i seen the media refer to them under this new guise.

As 80% owners, what say we cancel the ineffective PR campaign and save a few bucks?

[LADawson]

05:23 PM on 03/24/2009

We are a culture of right wing re-branding. It isn't torture, it's enhanced interrogation. It isn't the death tax, it's the estate tax. They aren't prisoners of war, they're enemy combatants. Then there are the more subtle ones, like: it isn't pro-choice, it's pro-abortion. It isn't giving children educated decisions about their sexual health, it's teaching them to be promiscuous. It isn't wanting to make sure the people who buy guns are given a proper background check, it's trying to take guns away from people. The sad part is, far too many people fall for it, and then vote based on their confused assumptions. Regardless, AIU is still the company that screwed us all over and Xe is still the company that murdered Iraqi civilians. I just can't fathom how they could pay Burson-Marsteller millions of dollars to improve their public relations, and this is what they come up with. The executives that shelled out that money should be crying and ranting in outrage that their money has been so wasted... or rather, our money.

[GolfingDevil05]

05:46 PM on 03/24/2009

Precisely. How much of our money went into the rebranding of this company, and if any of it did, who hired the genius who thought it was a good idea to come up with a name that sounds a lot like "IOU"?

[anachoret]

09:39 PM on 03/24/2009

Don't forget "toxic assets"... They are now "Legacy Assets."

[GolfingDevil05]

11:32 AM on 03/24/2009

Acronym contest time. What does AIU stand for?

All Investments Underperforming?

[foreverleft]

11:16 AM on 03/24/2009

Should have been AIOU.

[dgscol]

10:04 AM on 03/24/2009

AIG is too large. It will always move bad assets around, like it has. The larger it is, the more unmanageable it becomes, and the less efficient at what it is supposed to do. To secure the financial system, entities like AIG must be broken up.

[dgscol]

10:08 AM on 03/24/2009

At least one in every legal jurisdiction.

[RGKahn]

09:29 AM on 03/24/2009

"AIU Holdings: AIG Creates New Name To Avoid PR Disaster". A day late and a dollar short.

[Yurasis Dragon]

08:24 AM on 03/24/2009

Quick! They need to change their new name "AIU" to something REAL------- like "IOU"

[houseafire]

12:48 AM on 03/24/2009

LOL!!!

Well, guess 'they' believe that we are all too stupid to know that no matter what they call it...it's still the same old company, with the same old practices and greed, the same old attitude of pompous arogance....and, as has been proven, they can be sure that they will be worshiped and fed the green on a constant daily basis....that is until they and their buddies break the backs of us peons and we have no more to give. They will then pack up their suitcases of green and move to a different country, all the while lamenting how we let them down...

[DalaniaW]

12:49 AM on 03/25/2009

That is not what is happening. The whole company is not being changed to AIU. The insurance division - pretty much AIGCI - is splitting from the parent's brand name (for obvious reasons). The insurance division was not what was causing all of these problems for AIG or what caused the bailout. It is indeed quite sound. There's reason to be upset at what happened to AIG, but this move to rebrand the insurance is certainly not one of them. Some of you are really getting carried away here over something that isn't even happening (at least in this particular case).

[boomachine]

12:41 AM on 03/24/2009

they proved once again taht they are incompetent.

stupid idiots renamed from AIG to AIU. they sound awfully similar.

they should instead rename themselves to JOKE

[itsmyview2]

12:34 AM on 03/24/2009

PIG HOLDINGS, PORK IN GREED!

[RumiSouth]

12:28 AM on 03/24/2009

How about

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!

[anachoret]

12:59 AM on 03/24/2009

LOL
Good, good!
However, If I recall my "being hit on the head lessons," it should be Waah!

http://www.jumpstation.ca/recroom/comedy/python/argument.html

[illinoisan]

12:25 PM on 03/24/2009

You're doing it wrong. It should be "Waaah!"

[TheInsomniac]

12:11 AM on 03/24/2009

I think the most important part of a name change would be to take "American" out of it. Few of these companies have the best wishes of our nation at heart. And this is fundamentally why no sane and reasonable nation should allow corporations to run their government.

[anachoret]

12:43 AM on 03/24/2009

I completely agree.

[truestarr]

07:24 AM on 03/24/2009

except we (Americans) now own so much of it, it's finally named right. (tho the "U" at the end brings the word UNION to mind... wonder if they'll institute a "card check", or stick with the secret ballot?

[ruscle]

11:59 PM on 03/23/2009

AIG
AIU
IOU

[Carolab]

11:32 PM on 03/23/2009

AIG LOST BIG MONEY IN INSURANCE AS WELL AND GOT $44 BILLION FROM US!

Last weekend AIG released information about the amounts and recipients of roughly $100 billion of its government loans from September to December 2008. The utterly unreported surprise is that the staid, boring, heavily regulated INSURANCE businesses managed to run up losses on securities lending requiring $44 billion of government support!!

By way of contrast, the credit derivatives widely blamed for bringing down the world's financial system were consuming $27 billion of direct government support [and another $27 billion of indirect support, totaling $54 billion; municipal investment agreements (essentially, deposits) made by municipalities with AIG Financial Products took another $12 billion, and maturing debt took $13 billion.

Why the misdirected coverage? We are seeing an unholy alliance of insurance regulators who would rather point the finger at unregulated credit derivatives, people who always favor more regulation as the answer to everything, and public officials who don't want people to wonder whether other staid, boring insurance companies that don't do credit derivatives might still have huge problems in their core portfolios.

http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2009/03/who-broke-aig-.html

[dollbaby]

11:30 PM on 03/23/2009

Well, I feel so much better now that AIG is gone. DO THEY REALLY THINK WE ARE THAT STUPID? That sounds like something a 5 year old would come up with!

[DeniseD]

01:12 AM on 03/24/2009

Exactly! But they could have named it Puppy Dogs and we still would have been made.