No sacred cows, warns new AIG chief Robert Willumstad, promising to examine the Power Tower's operations from top to bottom, including more than $45 billion of hard-to-value assets. This as Martin Sullivan becomes at least the seventh finance CEO to crap out following the sub-prime mess.

And what about rescuing AIG's alternative assets? Suggestion--get on the Bat Phone to Doug Miles, founder and CEO of Princeton, NJ-based Globalprivatequity.com.

Elsewhere, shrinking stock prices and profits have not led to ousters, but oysters, the pearly kind, in the form of some rare CEO paydays. Merrill's John Thain topped the S&P 500 2007 list with a whopping $83.1 million; second was former actor Leslie Moonves, (who once appeared in TV's Six Million Dollar Man), now a $67.6 million dollar man over at CBS Corp.

"Compensation has become a shell game," comments a labor group director, meaning the removal of bonuses is hardly hindering big payouts. There was some pullback in 2007, but overall, CEO pay was up, certain to re-ignite the pay-for-performance debate.

"Booze and pills and powders" once sang Keith Richards, perhaps anticipating the following trio of tidbits. Fermenting away is InBev's takeover bid for Anheuser-Busch, with the suitor already hopping mad over AB's potentially takeover-thwarting discussion with Grupo Modelo.

In the low-priced generics world, Japan's Daiichi Sankyo is making a friendly play for Indian pharma king Ranbaxy, in a $4.6 billion pact that would create a combined $30 billion company.

Traditionally a licensing company, Daiichi, with a New Jersey headquarters, has set itself an ambitious 60 percent growth target. Pfizer may counterbid; the stage may also be set for a pharma M&A wave as the industry contends with expiring patents and wounded economies.

And ex-Broadcom CEO Henry T. Nicholas III's problems are bigger still.

Jeff Heilman

6/17/08