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 Remember how mad everyone got about the $165 million in retention bonuses American International Group Inc. (NYSE:AIG) doled out to employees? Well, it was actually a smidgen more. O.K., more than a smidgen. Four times more than the original figure as the insurer actually paid $454 million in bonuses, according to Reuters.
"The company told Representative Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat, the performance bonuses were paid out by operating units, across the company's operations in some 120 countries. Payments ranged from an average of $5,403 to employees of its property-casualty group, to $51,026 on average for those in its asset management group. The payments are in addition to an about $120 million corporate bonus pool designated for holding company employees and executives at subsidiary companies. The payments are separate from $1 billion in retention payments to entice employees to stay with the company." Politico has crunched the numbers to reveal the average size of bonuses at different units: "Domestic Life and Foreign Life Operations: 23,851 employees received an average of $5,050 each. Property Casualty Group: 3,943 employees received an average of $5,403 each. Foreign General Insurance Operations: 8,669 employees received an average of $5,074 each. Retirement Services Operations: 1,168 employees received an average of $11,889 each. Financial Services: 5,357 employees received an average of $4,994 each. Asset Management Group: 2,095 employees received an average of $51,026 each. Corporate wide variable plan: 6,410 employees received an average of $18,954 each." The Politico post inspired The Atlantic to run the numbers to come up with an overall average bonus, and the amount is about $8,832. The Atlantic's Conor Clark explained his method: "I count $454,771,905 distributed to 51,493 employees. Unless I'm making some terrible math error, that's an average bonus of about $8,832. For comparison, the average bonus on Wall Street in 2004 was $100,600." Will taxpayers be mad? Probably. Will they be surprised? Probably not. - Maria Woehr
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