Edward M. Liddy

Liddy was educated in Washington, D.C., earning a B.A. (1968) from the Catholic University of America and an M.B.A. (1972) from George Washington University. He began his career with International Harvester Co., a leading manufacturer of agricultural, transportation, and industrial equipment; he also worked for Ford Motor Co. and Ryder Systems, a truck-rental firm, before joining the pharmaceutical manufacturer G.D. Searle as a senior vice president in 1979. He became Searle’s chief financial officer (CFO) in 1981 under CEO Donald Rumsfeld.

Sears, Roebuck and Co. hired Liddy in 1988, and he became CFO in 1992. In that job he gained crucial background in the insurance and financial industries, especially through his work as the head of insurance company Allstate Corp., a Sears subsidiary. Liddy oversaw the spin-off of Allstate from Sears and was named chief operating officer (COO) of the newly public firm, Allstate Insurance Co., in 1994. He remained at Allstate as COO (1994–98), president (1995–2005), CEO (1999–2006), and chairman of the board (1999–2008) of parent company Allstate Corp. He reengineered the company by laying off much of its sales force and implementing Web-based customer service and sales. Liddy retired from Allstate in April 2008, but he continued to serve on some of the country’s most prestigious corporate boards, including 3M, Boeing, and Goldman Sachs.

In September 2008, as the global financial crisis that came to be often called the Great Recession was taking hold, Liddy was appointed CEO of AIG (at an annual salary of $1) as the insurance company was facing trillions of dollars in losses. Deemed “too big to fail,” AIG had received an estimated $170 billion in federal bailout funds and was required by the U.S. government to sell, barter, and broker its way out of its failures. To this end, Liddy sold several businesses as well as stakes in some units. His work also involved managing—and speaking to—the firm’s past failures. In August 2009 he retired from AIG.