Peter Hancock and the great AIG unwind

IN ADDITION

Fifty years of capital markets Jim Amine Samir Assaf Jean-Francois Astier Allegra Berman Mandy DeFilippo Jerry del Missier Bob Diamond Tyler Dickson Eric Dobkin Martin Egan Jim Esposito Guy Hands Jeremy Isaacs Conor Killeen John McNiven Chris O'Malley Vikram Pandit Hans-Joerg Rudloff John St John Paul Tregidgo Matthew Westerman

Peter Hancock joined AIG in 2010 to manage its risk, including unwinding positions that led to the insurance firm’s $182 billion bailout during the global financial crisis.

Hancock was hired at the recommendation of the New York Federal Reserve and PriceWaterhouse because of his reputation as a risk expert and one of the founders of the modern derivatives markets while at JPMorgan.

AIG’s derivatives exposure had been over $2 trillion at its peak, although that was only one of the issues for Hancock to address. 

“It was a liquidity crisis as opposed to a solvency crisis,” he says, “and the liquidity crisis was only partly due to derivatives, because as the company was downgraded its collateral obligations to counterparties went up. But there were other drains on liquidity, from securities lending to the financing businesses, which had long-term assets financed by short-term debt.