NEW YORK (Bloomberg) — Robert Benmosche, the chief executive officer of American International Group Inc., plans to spend part of his first month leading the insurer in Croatia on vacation, according to two people familiar with the situation.

Benmosche, 65, who started yesterday as CEO and president of the bailed-out company, will leave for about two weeks, according to one of the people, who declined to be identified because the plans were private. Mark Herr, an AIG spokesman, said the New York-based firm wouldn't comment on CEO travel.

"It's probably not a propitious time for an incoming CEO to begin with a vacation," said Steven Seiden, president of New York-based executive recruitment firm Seiden Krieger Associates. Seiden said that while the absence won't hurt the company's financial position, "from a public relations standpoint it's probably not the wisest thing to do".

Benmosche, named last week as AIG's fifth CEO since 2005, has to retain customers and employees to preserve the value of operations that will be sold to repay loans included in AIG's $182.5 billion US rescue. The insurer posted its first quarterly profit last week after more than $100 billion in net losses in the six prior periods, and said that subsidiaries "remain challenged".

The insurer's top executives are available to the company by telephone and the Internet when they travel, according to a person familiar with AIG. Peter Bakstansky, a spokesman for the trustees overseeing the government's majority stake in AIG, declined to comment. AIG declined to make Benmosche available for an interview.

Benmosche bought a Croatian villa, with 8,000 square feet of living space located along the Adriatic Coast, after visiting Dubrovnik in 1999, according to a 2004 Forbes magazine article. He paid about $1 million for the property, which was built in 1934 for the king of Yugoslavia's treasurer and included four buildings and 150 feet of waterfront, the magazine said.

"It's breathtaking — you couldn't find anything like this anywhere else," Benmosche told Forbes. "I'm an hour's flight to most places in Europe and a ferry ride across the Adriatic to Italy."

Benmosche was CEO of MetLife Inc., the largest US life insurer, for eight years through 2006 and oversaw the company's transition to a publicly traded business from a policyholder-owned firm.