(FT) -- Prudential's top team has the full support of the board and the majority of big shareholders and there will be no resignations over the collapse of its $35.5bn (£24.3bn) bid for AIA, Harvey McGrath, the UK insurer's chairman, has told the Financial Times.
In a defiant first interview since the board of AIG rejected a renegotiation of the deal early on Tuesday, Mr McGrath described those shareholders calling for change at the top as "outliers" and said that neither he nor Tidjane Thiam, chief executive, had been at all worried about their positions.
"The board is completely behind the management team. No one has offered to resign and no one has been asked to resign," Mr McGrath said.
"There are a couple of shareholders calling for change, but they are outliers. The vast majority of our biggest investors are saying they don't want to see change at the top. They are supportive of management and of Tidjane, who they have seen as [chief financial officer] help to drive the performance of the group."
There have been calls for heads to roll at the Pru over the attempt to take over AIA, the Asian businesses of AIG.
Mr Thiam, who also spoke to the FT on Thursday, said: "It is a clever thing to try and connect my inability to seal a $35bn deal with my broad ability to run a company, but it is a fallacy.
"To say I'm inexperienced in running a $35bn transaction, that's true. Not many have experience of running a $35bn transaction."
A significant proportion of investors was set to vote against the deal and forced the Pru to renegotiate the price, which it did over the weekend, cutting it to $30.4bn.
However, AIG's board went against the advice of Robert Benmosche, its chief executive, and said it would only consider the deal on its original terms. AIG is now likely to seek to list the unit in Hong Kong this year.
Some analysts have warned against any knee-jerk changes at the top of the Pru, while many investors simply want to see a period of calm and stability at the company, which is not necessarily the same as unalloyed, long-term support for the senior management.
Mr McGrath said the team was "quite devastated" when it found out AIG had rejected the renegotiated price. "But we were not worried at all about our positions," he added.
The chairman went on: "This was an 'in-strategy' transaction and was an acceleration of the focus on growing the business in Asia.
"Just because this transaction ... did not work -- or failed if you want to say that -- it doesn't mean that the underlying strategy has a problem. The board understand that and are behind the strategy and were behind the transaction."
Pru backs top team over failed Asian bid
Source: CNN.COM
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