Graffiti-Sprayin' Rebel Dude to Take Over at America's Biggest Insurer
On September 1, 55-year-old Peter Hancock will take over as chief executive officer at American International Group, Inc. A Bloomberg profile of Hancock published today wants you to know: This is not your daddy's AIG CEO.
In 2010, when Hancock made his radical arrival at the company, "one of the newcomer's first challenges was the blank walls of his office," Zachary Tracer writes at Bloomberg. So what did he do? He busted out a can of Krylon.
The insurer's stockpile of paintings tended toward dogs and ducks. Hancock's tastes lean abstract. Spurred on by the national disgust for the bailed-out insurer, the ex-J.P. Morgan & Co. executive picked up some spray paint, spread newspapers around the dining room of his home, and set to work.
"People think we're lame..." he thought to himself, surely. "But actually? We rule."
He sprayed a giant, white "AIG Sucks" on a six-foot by four-foot blue background. Over the first two letters of Sucks, Hancock painted a red "Ro," spelling out "Rocks" and revealing on canvas the aspirations that would occupy the next years of his life.
A truly gnarly origin story. Hancock also goes kite surfing with his 22-year-old son, we learn, and introduced a new metric at the company called RAP. Hip hop don't stop!
It's all like a scene out of a Disney Channel original movie: roller-bladin' cool kid takes over giant, stuffy corporation and remakes it in his own rebellious image. First order of business: make the dog the new head of strategic planning and eatin' your own doo-doo! Get out of here, Spike. We're having a meeting.
[Image via Bloomberg]