This week on Masters in Business radio podcast, I speak with Jim Millstein, Co-Chairman of Guggenheim Securities, and former Chief Restructuring Officer at Treasury, who was the principal architect of AIG’s restructuring. Millstein (and/or his firm) has had a ringside seat to some of the biggest restructurings such as cable operator Charter Communications; the United Auto Workers/GM/Chrysler; US Airways, Greece, and US territory Puerto Rico.
He discusses how a phone call came in out of the blue shortly after AIG’s $182 billion dollar bailout, asking for his help in restructuring the company. Despite the pay cut, the opportunity to be involved in a historic restructuring was too good to pass up, leading to Millstein overseeing the full restructuring of the company until 2011.
He also believes we are at the leading edge fo a wave of future corporate restructuring, due to the big increase in financial engineering of corporate debt in the ZIRP/share buyback era.
His favorite books are here; transcript of our conversation is posted here.
You can stream/download the full conversation, including the podcast extras on iTunes, Bloomberg, Overcast, and Stitcher. Our earlier podcasts can all be found at iTunes, Stitcher, Overcast, and Bloomberg.
Next week, we speak with Social Psychologist Robert Cialdini, Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University. He is the author of the book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion which has sold 3 million copies in 30 languages. His new book is is Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade.
Jim Millstein’s Favorite Books
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World by Adam Tooze
On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System by Hank Paulson
Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises by Tim Geithner
The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath by Ben Bernanke
The Activist Director: Lessons from the Boardroom and the Future of the Corporation by Ira Millstein
Capitalizing on Crisis: The Political Origins of the Rise of Finance by Greta Krippner
