Epilogue

After a 10-day Asian trip in 1984, Greenberg and Freeman, the Asia hand among the band of brothers, were flying back from Tokyo, along with an old friend and insurance broker, Mel Harris. They had stopped in Anchorage to refuel and headed for Miami to meet their wives for a weekend getaway. Captain Davis was about to begin the descent.

Bang—a loud explosion rang through the cabin, jolting the passengers. Davis reported that the jet’s left engine had blown, but that they could manage, as the right one was running. Yet five seconds later, bang—the right engine failed, too. At about 43,000 feet, the engineless jet was in peril.

Calmly but quickly, Davis and Greenberg conferred on alternatives. They had two viable choices: glide to Miami, probably within range, but a complex approach at a busy airport, or drift to a private airfield in Tampa, further away but easier to hit. Without power, the crew would have only one chance at a safe landing. They opted for Miami, got emergency clearance, and started a hopeful approach. On course for a harrowing landing, at 27,000 feet, the flight engineer managed to recover the right engine. With power, the pilots regained full control, and the AIG executives reunited with their wives for the weekend.

To Greenberg, the unnerving experience of losing both engines and then regaining power paralleled the loss of AIG and the ensuing recovery of the Starr companies. After losing AIG, Greenberg began building C. V. Starr & Company and SICO, along with a growing stable of subsidiaries, some predating AIG, such as Starr Aviation, Starr Marine, and Starr Tech.1 The Starr Companies, as they are now called, are doing business in all lines of insurance throughout the world in Australia, China, Great Britain, Japan, Latin America, the Middle East, and Turkey. They also maintain investment businesses in China, Russia, and the United States, and have real estate interests worldwide. They are becoming another unique franchise, characterized by some of the same traits that traditionally distinguished AIG and were critical to its success.

Greenberg envisions building a powerful insurance and investment business with the sophistication and capital resources to insure any kind of property/casualty risk anywhere in the world. The Starr Companies attract employees eager to develop new products and open markets, using the profit center model focused on accountability, expense control, risk analysis, and generating an underwriting profit. Staffing is lean, there are neither employee manuals nor employment contracts; compensation is incentive based and geared toward long-term performance. Travel schedules remain grueling, with Greenberg taking monthly trips to China and elsewhere in Asia and the occasional swift trip halfway around the world and back—New York to Oman on Friday, back on Sunday. Where opportunities for opening new markets and products exist, the Starr Companies are at the forefront.

The leadership is experienced and involved, all directors being deeply versed in the insurance business, and senior management boasting a team of internationally minded entrepreneurial executives akin to the MOPs of AIG’s heyday. They lead by example and attempt to infuse the corporate culture with a sense of passion about building this business, committed to developing an employee-centric atmosphere stoked by healthy competition, with a strong sense of camaraderie and mutual loyalty. Maintaining that capability requires flexibility in company design and oversight, starting with the board of directors and how it interacts with management. The approach is simple: all directors are also members of management, and all are devoted to helping the team build the company.

Relationships remain vital. In the fall of 2011, Greenberg invited the mayor of Shanghai to spend the weekend at Morefar, Starr’s old estate in Brewster, New York. The visit would be one stop on an international trip that took the mayor from Shanghai to India, Argentina, and the United States, there to visit not only the Starr Companies but also area neighbors General Electric and IBM. The New York leg included a visit Friday morning to the New York Stock Exchange. Greenberg had arranged to meet the mayor and his entourage there and take the group up to Morefar by helicopter.

A driving rain pounded the New York region that day, however, making flight impossible. Greenberg proposed to drive his car downtown and pick them up, but the mayor said they would prefer to rent a coach bus for the ride so they could sleep. En route, first the downpour prompted closing the Hutchinson Parkway, causing a detour, and later the bus broke down. The group finally reached Brewster at 10:00 P.M. The chef had managed to keep their dinner warm and delicious. After eating in the clubhouse at Morefar, Greenberg escorted the mayor to his room. It was Cornelius Vander Starr’s master bedroom where the mayor of Shanghai got a good rest that rainy night, 92 years after the Starr Companies got their start in the mayor’s hometown, Shanghai, the Paris of the Orient.

Notes

1. After five years of sustained business development, in March 2011, Greenberg released a video on the company’s web site explaining a rebranding. The Starr Companies became the new name and umbrella for all the various insurance companies and agencies in the Starr family: beginning with C. V. Starr & Company and SICO, and including the several insurance agencies. Zaeem Shoaib, “Report: C.V. Starr, Starr International USA rebranding as Starr Cos.,” SNL Insurance Mergers and Acquisitions (March 15, 2011).