It’s been a horror week for AMP CEO Andrew Mohl. Over the course of the past week he has had to deal with a range of setbacks:

• Someone connected with the group’s dead-in-the-water UK operations leaked information about a damning audit report, setting of a series of events which wiped millions of dollars more from the already diminished value of the company.
• Mr Mohl had to pay for the failings of his predecessors, agreeing to fork out $56.3 million as its share of a $112 million class action settlement to shareholders of GIO Insurance. GIO was bought by AMP in 1999 in a ruinously expensive hostile takeover bid led by George Trumble, who left his successor, Paul Batchelor, to clean up the mess. Mr Mohl succeeded Mr Batchelor earlier this year when the group revealed huge losses from its UK operations.

AMP said the GIO payout will be “covered by reserves within the company”.

Mr Mohl kept himself busy in the meantime overseeing preparations for the August 20 profit announcement, which is tipped by analysts to be a $2 billion interim loss. So far all AMP will say is that its underlying group earnings and UK writedowns for the first half of 2003 are “broadly in line with guidance previously given” to the market when the group announced its demerger at the beginning of May.