It doesn’t take much to get tongues wagging about the future plans of AIG’s 76-year-old Chairman Maurice Greenberg. He failed to turn up at a major insurance conference in Bermuda last week, and that got everyone asking the same question: after 35 years at the helm of a conglomerate he has made into the world’s second-largest financial services company and the largest insurer, will he step aside soon?

Mr Greenberg’s sons, who were seen as his logical heirs apparent, have left the company and there is no outstanding successors to the top job. The company says it has a succession plan under lock and key. Just as well, because AIG isn’t too experienced at succession plans. The company’s legendary founder, Cornelius van der Starr, who founded AIG 83 years ago, was Mr Greenberg’s predecessor in the job.

AIG is now worth about $360 billion. That has set some experts looking beyond the succession issue to a more crucial question for shareholders: could anyone else even run the place? Stay tuned.