Risk & Business

Image by Getty Images via Daylife It seems that the recent death of Michael Jackson has precipitated the start of not only one of the largest ticket refunds in history, but also raises the added issue regarding the payout of the event cancellation coverage purchased by the promoter, AEG Live. Insurer 's had issued a policy, with a premium of $18 million, to cover the cancellation of the concerts in the event of an accident. The policy was also supposed to provide coverage if medical issues should arise causing cancellation. The problem is the wording of the policy and the actual cause of the singer 's death. It is supposed to take up to several weeks for the reports to come back with a definitive answer on the cause of Mr. Jackson's death. Imagine the cost to the promoter if the policy should end up being denied. It's being written that they sold tickets with a face value of $85 million, gave Mr. Jackson $20 million upfront and spent close to $10 million on re

Image via Wikipedia Recently the head of AIG , Edward Liddy , announced his intention to step down from the company's leadership post. As has been widely reported, AIG was one of the first companies to receive " bailout " money from the government and since then have been widely criticized for it's executive pay packages, bonuses, and other forms of compensation to it's executives . I guess when a company that large hits hard times due to numerous strategic "errors" on the part of it's leadership, and then receives a large infusion of cash from the federal government , it deserves the kind of scrutiny and micromanagement it has been under from the feds. However, there's a problem developing, not only at AIG, but at many other companies that are receiving federal funds . The problem is the compensation at these firms amounts to $1.00 a week. How are you going to get someone with the savvy and experience to come in and run these major corpo