We’ve dug up a speech Joseph Cassano gave in the Spring of 2007, giving a history of AIG Financial Products and explaining how risk free an enterprise it was. Here Cassano goes back a decade to explain those precious days when CDOs and MBSs and the credit default swaps that helped make them toxic where just in their swaddling clothes …
It was a watershed event in 1998 when JPMorgan came to us, who were somebody we worked with a great deal, and asked us to participate in some of their early what they called then bistro trades, and these trades were the precursors to what’s become the CDO market today, and the early movers in that.
And we were able to catch that wave of that business and were able to build on that platform. And you all read in the newspapers today, credit derivatives are one of the fastest growing segments in the derivatives markets and we’re a very large participant in a very specific niche, and that niche is in the super senior business and that’s one of the things that Andy will talk about during his segment.
