AIG learned hard lessons back then that raising cash isn’t always as simple as investors would like. One would-be buyer for the International Lease Finance Corp. plane unit was unable to deliver the funds after agreeing to a deal. Other deals for units in Asia stalled or collapsed.

Benmosche insisted on demanding what he saw as the right price, even if it meant slowing down divestitures at a time when the government was eager to shrink New York-based AIG. He said in 2009 that patience in exiting derivative positions would protect the insurer.

Goldman’s Bonus Pool

“My biggest concern is you’re selling too fast and you’re being taken by Wall Street,” he told staff. “I don’t want to feed Goldman Sachs’s bonus pool anymore,” he said. “I want to feed ours. In order to do that, you’ve got to stop giving this stuff away. You’ve got to ask for decent prices or we’ll wait.”

Benmosche halted the auction of a U.S. investment advisory unit his first month on the job and refused to lower the takeover price when shareholders of Prudential Plcdeclined to support that company’s bid of about $35 billion for AIA Group Ltd., a Hong Kong-based insurer. Benmosche eventually raised a similar sum by exiting AIA through four public offerings. He died last year.

Hancock, who was hired by Benmosche in 2010, spoke in his first months as CEO about not being hurried into deals, even for non-core assets like the AerCap stake that AIG acquired when that aircraft-leasing company agreed to buy ILFC.

“It would seem like a hot potato,” Hancock said in February of the AerCap stake, when the Netherlands-based company was trading for about $43 a share. “I would not describe it that way.”

AIG raised more than $3 billion by selling most of its AerCap shares in June at $49 apiece. The aircraft-lessor’s shares have since plunged to less than $33.

‘More Noise’

Still, Paulson would like AIG to trim down more dramatically, according to people with knowledge of the hedge- fund manager’s thinking in November. That could involve selling life insurers and a mortgage guarantee operation to focus on property-casualty coverage, an approach that Icahn endorsed in Tuesday’s letter. And Icahn has said he may seek the addition of a director who could replace Hancock as CEO if asked to do so by the board.