Ex-AIG chief does not 'feel any responsibility'

Thursday, April 2, 2009 at 12:57 AM Posted by Beijing News


The former head of disgraced insurance giant AIG, Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, said in an interviewthat he does not "feel any responsibility at all" for the company's problems.

Greenberg, 83, was set to testify Thursday before a congressional committee, his first public appearance under oath since the government's first bailout of the firm in September.

At the hearing, he plans to propose reducing the government's stake in AIG and pressuring trading partners to invest back into the company, the Wall Street Journal said on its website.

"Somebody should lean on them," Greenberg told the Journal, referring to trading partners that received massive payments thanks to a government rescue that has so far exceeded 170 billion dollars.

AIG has been vilified by politicians and analysts after it was revealed it was still paying bonuses worth around 165 million dollars despite the huge cash injections by Washington to keep it from collapsing. The company has since said it will return about 50 million dollars of the bonuses.

Greenberg helped turn the firm into the world's biggest insurer before he was forced out in 2005.

"I don't feel any responsibility at all" for AIG's problems, Greenberg told the newspaper. "How can I be responsible for something that occurred when I'm not there?"

In his prepared testimony, Greenberg said that reducing the federal government's stake in the company from its current level of about 80 percent to 15 percent would attract private investors.

"Shrinking the government's ownership could be politically unpalatable, given public frustration with government bailouts of financial firms," the newspaper noted.

According to the Journal, Greenberg was expected to urge pressuring AIG's trading partners -- including big US and foreign banks -- to invest some of the money they received from the bailout back into the company.

The Hill newspaper said Congressman Darrell Issa, the ranking Republican on the committee, sent a letter to the committee chairman Edolphus Towns questioning Greenberg's credibility as a witness because he is involved in nine lawsuits and a securities fraud investigation.

"I hope you will reconsider allowing Mr Greenberg to testify before the Committee or at the very least, join me in publicly acknowledging the veracity of his testimony is questionable," Issa wrote.

The former AIG executive, who now leads another insurer, C.V. Starr & Co., acknowledged he had been impacted by AIG's decline, although he minimized his losses.

"Of course, I lost considerable net worth," he told the Journal. "But I'm working. My life is not materially changed."





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