It is late afternoon on the last day of August, and Larry Roth sits in a beige and ivory conference room on the 15th floor of One World Financial Center in Manhattan. The setting sun is beaming through a large window behind him. Most of the office has emptied out for the day. Roth, the CEO of AIG Advisor Group, is considering the question at hand: After relentless bad publicity for a massive government bailout to rescue a company rendered nearly insolvent by the reckless deal making of a small unit in London, wouldn't it have been easier to have made a clean break from the troubled parent company?

I don't think that's true at all," Roth says. He gives several compelling reasons why the 11th-hour decision made on Aug. 14 by Robert Benmosche, AIG'S new CEO and president, to nix a deal for the advisor group was the right decision. For one, he credits Benmosche with reenergizing the advisor group and recommitting resources to build its business. Roth also maintains that a large, diversified insurance-based financial services company remains a great environment in which to grow a broker-dealer. The AIG Advisor Group, he says, offers a quality platform, quality products, excellent technology and a commitment to continue investing in that technology.

"I think a private equity transaction could have been great," Roth says. "I think it would have served the advisors well. It would have brought us closure. But it would not have brought us clarity for six or 12 months."

Had the advisor group been sold to a private equity firm—and a deal was indeed imminent—advisors would have been left with many questions, Roth says. They wouldn't know how committed the new management would be to investing in technology. They wouldn't know whether the new management would want to go self-clearing. Perhaps most important, they wouldn't know whether the new management would want to combine the network's three broker-dealers—Royal Alliance of New York, SagePoint Financial of Phoenix and FSC of Atlanta—into one brand.

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

But still, talk about bad karma. AIG remains, essentially, a zombie company, with 80% owned by the U.S. government, which has infused $170 billion since the 2008 collapse. In the public lexicon, in fact, AIG is synonymous with the credit market freeze and subsequent economic meltdown. As this story went to press, The Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. prosecutors were planning to convene a grand jury to consider indicting Joseph Cassano, the former head of the AIG Financial Products unit, for securities fraud. "The AIG name is not a positive," Roth admits. "I don't think there is anything I could tell you with a straight face that is great about the AIG name at the moment. But I do believe that we not only have closure, we also have clarity and a CEO at AIG who understands our business. That's very meaningful."

Plenty of challenges still remain for the Advisor Group, which lost about 18% of its trailing 12-month production over the last year, with the biggest hit coming in the first six months when AIG seemed to be in the news every day. Roth and his team must revive a recruiting business that had become all but dormant because of the government bailout and uncertainties about whether the unit would be sold. They must hope that an ambitious advertising plan for its three broker-dealers succeeds at reaffirming their strength and stability in a crowded field. They must retain the top advisors who are getting heavily recruited by their rivals. And, of course, they must do something about that name.

"It had gotten to the point where we had AIG letters taken off all of our corporate credit cards because we couldn't go to dinner with an advisor and pay for dinner without concern that someone at the local restaurant would say, 'whisper, whisper, we just had somebody from AIG'," Roth says. "I mean that's how silly it was."

BRAND NEW

The reemergence of the AIG Advisor Group from what Roth terms as "not the most enjoyable" 12 months of his 25-year career is already in full motion. The recruiting, the marketing, the conferences, the meetings, it's all happening.

"We're back in business now," Roth says.

But when your business was on the brink of being sold by a company that was on the brink of bankruptcy, plans for a rebranding are intrinsic to the story of its rebirth. At the time this article went to press, AIG Advisor Group was in the final stages of hiring a branding consultant to help it with the makeover. The process will likely be completed by the end of the year at the latest.