I know the insurance business. A company that doesn’t treat its independent agents well dies quickly. Some senior execs hate going to these events. Others love it. But it’s a perk for the agents, and an event is held only if the assessment is that it will pay for itself through more sales from the invited agents. You send only the execs that you think the agents will want/need to see there.

Typically, the events are arranged a year in advance. Cancellation might not have saved much, if anything.

Should AIG have cancelled? Given the sound bites that have been made out of it, probably. But if you’re trying to make sure that a business doesn’t go down the tubes, the last thing you do is send a message to your customers that you are “shutting down”. Sending out cancellation notices to your top agents would have sent that message.

Remember, AIG may be cooked, but its insurance subsidiaries are healthy businesses. AIG is hoping to repay that Fed Reserve loan by selling off its insurance subs. AIG managers should be sued for negligence if they permitted the businesses to lose customers and value unnecessarily.

Maybe it was a dumb call, but it’s not as straightforward as it looks from a distance.