When Manchester United players return on 12 July from the World Cup or their summer holidays they will begin pre-season training in Chicago. The Windy City is host not only to Cubs Baseball, Bears American football and Bulls Basketball but Aon, United’s new £80 million principal shirt sponsors whom begin their deal today.
The $7.5 billion-a-year US corporation has 36,000 employees in 500 offices in more than 120 countries, providing insurance brokerage, risk management and human capital management services to a range of blue-chip clients.
In the financial turmoil surrounding the US market over the past 18 months, Aon remains a considerable success story. Indeed the corporation is a change apart from AIG, United’s previous sponsors who so dramatically collapsed, requiring a $90 billion US government bail-out.
Aon’s sponsorship is a strategic push towards globalising the group’s brand through United’s huge worldwide supporter base. United’s previous sponsors AIG followed a similar strategy, with the club’s research pointing to a large rise in the brand’s profile among the reds’ estimated 330 million fans. An end goal not helped by AIG’s near total collapse of course.
Aon and United shared a somewhat predictable platform for mutual self-congratulations today, on commencement of the four-year deal.
“Based on our shared values of leadership, teamwork and a passion for excellence, it is difficult to imagine a stronger fit for Aon than Manchester United,” Aon Corporation president and chief executive Greg Case told club mouthpiece ManUtd.com today.
“Through the global charitable initiatives of Aon’s 36,000 colleagues, we will work with our partners at Manchester United and the Manchester United Foundation to promote these values and create positive opportunities for young people, to enable them to thrive and to help improve their communities.”
It’s a nice sentiment but one that does not always tally closely with Aon’s recent history, littered as it is with significant controversy, including charges of corruption, financial rule-breaking and – most seriously – supporting human rights violations in Burma.
Indeed, in early 2009 the company paid a £5.25 million fine to the Financial Services Authority (FSA) – the UK’s financial regulator – for anti-corruption failings, with the group’s UK subsidiary found guilty of failing to crack down on possible bribery. The FSA found the company had made payments of €1.4 million (£1.26 million) and $3.25 million (£2.13 million) to unnamed third parties as part of Aon’s overseas new business development process.
The payments, made to intermediaries at a Bulgarian insurance company and one owned by the Burmese Government, were among 66 suspicious arrangements with firms in Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Burma, Indonesia and Vietnam, claimed the Times newspaper. Each was reported to the Serious Organised Crime Agency before the FSA’s crackdown.
Perhaps more damaging still was the $190 million settlement that Aon paid to end New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s 2005 investigation into conflicts of interest and alleged fraud at the company. Including settling probes in Connecticut and Illinois Aon paid, without admission of liability, the $190 million over 30 months to policyholders damaged by the company’s actions.
Spitzer’s probe came in response to charges that Aon’s staff promised to place business with insurers if those firms agreed to use the company’s reinsurance brokerage services. These so-called ‘contingent commissions’ were an endemic practice at the company, according to the Attorney General. That Aon publicly denied the practice a year earlier only reflected poorly on the world’s second largest reinsurance corporation.
Aon is closer to AIG in other ways but certainly nothing the Chicago-based giant should be proud of. Indeed the both companies’ place, until 2005, on the Burma insurance ‘dirty list’ – those firms found propping up the country’s secretive military junta – is a source of historical, if not current, shame.
Burma’s democracy movement has long named and shamed companies that invest in Burma, with foreign trade enriching a regime that rules through torture, violence and child labour. It puts the match-day harassment at Old Trafford into perspective.
They say they you are judged by the company you keep.
In April, the Manchester United Supporters Trust (MUST) invoked the analogy to place pressure on United’s commercial partners. In this case the message works both ways, with the Glazers new partners seemingly perfect bedfellows with the American family.
If the claims against Aon are true it really doesnt surprise me. Obviously money means more to the club/owners than ethics. Barcelona put all the top football clubs to shame, championing a charity on it’s shirt.
Oh yeah, Barca keep their disgraceful behaviour on the pitch and the fans extend hospitality outside! Just because they have a unicef logo for free doesn’t make them saints. The fans attacked Jose’s convoy this year and the on field behavior you know very well. Get off your high horses and understand that all businesses are run in a cut throat manner. All sponsors will have enough dirt if you know where to dig, unless you want United in league with a few local sponsors, deal with it. Are you trying to suggest that any new owner will have “clean” sponsors? If they don’t are you going to chase them out too? No point getting ahead of ourselves and trying to be idelaistic.
So does boca, and their administration, ever since Macri left, is one of the worst in south america, dealing with hoolingans and taking brives left and right.
Barcelona are not a whiter than white club, there recent link up with FC Bunyodkor of Uzbekistan (a country with an appalling human rights record) makes a mockery of the UNICEF logo on their shirt!
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/373944-barcelona-budyonkor-uzbekistan-and-unicef
Good grief… what colour is the sky on your world?
@ alfonso, the sky seemily blue here but im simply red and white to the core, you protesters simply cant handle the fact the majority of us dont back or even agree with your views can ya, so you gota pull a comment out like that…well guess what, there 330m of us and just 158k of you so face fact, back the club or keep to the protest rub (freedom of choice), but dont make dum comments like that just cause unable handle my say.
you tell them aj!! Asking us to support any movement that is not backed by a solid plan that can remove us out of this rut is like asking me to trust someone hiding in a cupboard. Depict the Glazers as villains because they are Yanks or because of the debt? if it is only the debt then is any one a 100% sure the new owners won’t do the same? if they are not sure then how can we be expected to back them up?
No one is telling you who to support, or what to say “aj”, or “elvido”… but for the sake of your own credibility… you should put a bit more thought into what you write.
oh really? pray what kind of thoughts? Looked in the mirror recently? For the sake of your own credibility, you should understand the business side of sport, i was commenting more on the constant anti glazer junta! no i am not a supporter of the glazers, an ideal situation would be a debt free, supporter owned club, that’s not going to happen though is it? Am i okay with our association with AON, not necessarily, but there is no visible option, unless i want the club taking a stand putting the future at risk. I was hoping for a break in this anti-owner sentiment so that there is more stability around the club. I never said that you lot asked me to support anyone, but a supporter one does notice the organisations that represent the supporters, i was making a point more in that direction. I do not agree with the language or construction of AJs tirade (vitriolic and unnecessary) but more the total support of the club that he wanted to talk about but obviously lost his way in slagging you off. If you misunderstand what i am trying to say then it’s a limitation on both sides. As OhNoDrasdo has said, i don’t like the club being fleeced to line some one else’s pockets, but unless there’s a Oil billionaire round the corner, we are going to have take the corporate route. I don’t want to jeopardize the running of the club by going against everything they do! And by the way, what’s with the quotes?
aj – ok that’s enough. I’m not sure how legitimate protest has anything to do with Hitler and you do yourself a serious injustice by making that ridiculous comparison. I’ve personally attacked nobody so I’m not sure who you mean by “you”.
Who’s ruining what? Each of the three cases presented here is a matter of public record a) FSA fine for what effectively amounts to bribery, b) Spitzer investigation into similar practices and c) the fact the company was on the Burma dirty list. All fact, all public and maybe you don’t care but I think United fans should be concerned about who our great club associates with.
It’s sad and completely unsurprising that the Glazers have aligned themselves with Aon. Another strip I won’t be buying
aj its pretty simple – if you dont like it dont read it. Everyone is welcome to their opinion (based far more on facts than your outbursts) and so try and respect that instead of launching into such a vitriolic response. Of course you can disagree, and in certain aspects of what you say I agree with, however I also see that the bottom line is our club is being used primarily for the financial benefit of some Americans, to the detriment of the club with some dubious business practices, whilst taking very little risk themselves. And that worries me a lot.
Dear Aj,
As a valued employee of our company I take great pride in your willingness to defend our business practices. However, you should be working on operation corruption and not writing to Internet forums. Lunch hours for Aon employees are strictly 1pm to 2pm. Outside of this time Aon employees are prohibited in participating in non work related activities. A disciplinary procedure will have to be launched as per company policy.
Yours Sincerely
Jimmy Aon
Aon CEO
I love how you say a few lines, provoking an unnecessary diatribe which proves you wrong for things you didnt say.
I understand it is perhaps fanciful of me to think United would pass up the millions sponsors pay. I dont think it necessarily follows though that it has to be a corrupt one, which has links to a government which commits serious human rights abuses.
Blimey, I remember a time when football fans would go to watch their team and the extent of their conversation would be whether or not “that Number Seven” is up to much or not.
Whether the gaffer was bunking up with the milkman’s wife was never even a consideration.
Now, it seems we have to be “conscientious fans” with one eye on the news and the other on the sponsorship deals and whether or not we would like to be associated with them (which, presumably means that as a “conscientious objector” we should not wish to wear a shirt with a sponsor’s name whose business practices we don’t agree with on it? Should we then even wish to be associated with a club who associates with these people and should therefore choose the team we support based on the “company they keep”?).
Am I going to have to go round researching every club in the country to find one who is sponsored by “nice safe honest-to-goodness companies”?
There’ll be no time to actually watch any football at this rate!
As a side note, if you ever get a chance to go to Chicago take it with both hands. A great city to visit. Superb shops, restaurants, museums, sports venues and the view onto Lake Michigan is amazing.
Often regarded as 2nd best to New York in the US (not true IMO), the locals humour is not unlike the residents of Manchester. i.e. Proud of what they’ve got but not up themselves like Londoners or New Yorkers!
First AIG and now AON what is wrong with us?????
Disgusting. Shameful.