Just read an article on AdAge about Charles Schwab putting their accounts on review.  Omnicom Group’s PHD is who has the business now.  Nice folks over there, I worked on their “perspectives.” corporate blog a couple years ago, which included a couple trips to their office.  I hope they manage to keep the contract. The “Talk to  Chuck” campaign is definitely pretty good, and take a look at this quote:

A number of media agencies are going to get the chance to “Talk to Chuck” about his $100 million media-planning and -buying account in the next few weeks. Charles Schwab, one of the only financial-services companies not to take any federal bailout money, has put its traditional and digital media business up for review.

How about that, here I go and talk about AIG like they’re the devil.  And now there’s some contrast for you - one of the only financial-services companies not to take any federal bailout money – excellent.  So there IS a way to run a financial-services company without needing handouts from the government!  That’s what they should be talking about in their advertising campaigns (unless they also have humility listed as a corporate virtue, in which case they’re pretty much saints).

I know if AIG goes out of business in one way or another (bankruptcy, getting burned to the ground by rioters, etc) – there will be tremendous repercussions for the US and possibly world economy.  But seriously, their stock market cap is $1.24 billion dollars (and this is after today’s jump in price after it was announced that they’re getting another $30 billion in Government aid).  I must be missing something about the structure of AIG’s stock – this market cap number has got to be missing a big chunk of whatever it is that makes up AIG’s mass.  I mean, their total loss for 2009 is somewhere in the ballpark of $90 billion dollars.  Even at their 52 week high of $51.47 a share – their market cap is somewhere in the ballpark of $138 billion.  And guess what, so far the government aid package has totalled $150 billion to them.

I know, I know – a trillion dollars in assets and almost that much in liabilities.  A big number minus another big number plus a stream of drops in the bucket in government aid equals a really bizzare stock valuation.  Thats why I titled this one AIG WTF!

Astronomers – if you’re tired of looking for dark matter in space, take a look over at AIG – they’ve got something that apparently has mass but cannot be seen or detected in any way whatsoever.  Bizzare, this is one of the reasons I am glad I’m an engineer.  Sometimes finance is less intuitive than quantum physics.