Ball point pen on the morning newsprint

New York Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo has railed against bonuses for employees of company's receiving bailout money. He's fought to get a list of those at Merrill Lynch who seemed to loot the company on the way out the door.  Yesterday Cuomo announced that nine of the top ten and fifteen of the top twenty recipients of bonus money at AIG have volunteered to return their bonuses.

The post Andrew Cuomo appeared first on Larry Roibal.

Ball point pen on the morning newsprint

In spite of the deep financial crisis within AIG last year, they still managed to pony up $103,100 in campaign cash to the Chair of the Senate Banking Committee, Chris Dodd and 101,332 to then Senator Obama...... Now, who changed the language in the original bailout bill that would have prohibited taxpayers money from going towards bonuses? Answer: Chris Dodd's staff after talking to Obama's Treasury department...hmmm

The post Follow The Money appeared first on Larry Roibal.

Ball point pen on the morning newsprint

Founder of AIG, Hank Greenberg, was forced to leave the company in 2005 under threat of indictment by New York's (then) attorney general Eliot Spitzer, but not without a very nice golden parachute. As PART of his deferred compensation, he received 3.7 million shares of AIG stock in January of 08. At that time AIG's stock price was in the mid 50's making the payment worth about $200 million, for which he paid $70 million in taxes. Today AIG's stock is valued at 42 cents, making those same shares worth 1.5 million. Now Greenberg is suing his former company claiming they hid their exposure to sub-prime, artificially keeping the stock price high. I guess he's in a position to know. Yesterday on Bloomberg, current CEO Liddy claimed that Greenberg was at the helm during the formation of AIG’s financial products unit, which sold derivatives that cost the company more than $30 billion in writedowns and prompted a government rescue. The worst part is, since AIG is being kept afloat with taxpayer money, should Greenberg prevail, you and I would pay the settlement. That's rich!

The post Hank Greenberg appeared first on Larry Roibal.

Ball point pen on the morning newsprint

AIG's stock price two years ago was 69.00 per share, one year ago it was 42.00. Liddy took over the helm in June of last year with the stock in the 30's. Later that year, while Lehman Brothers and other giants were going bankrupt, AIG was deemed too big to fail and received $85 billion in bailout money. A month later Liddy defended spending $440,000 of that money on a retreat at a luxurious California resort saying it was "standard practice in our industry" Today the stock is at 0.42 a share and AIG is receiving another 30 Billion in taxpayers dollars. What started as as a mortgage crisis is now a crisis in confidence. Since shinning a light on the "standard practices" of corporate America, investors have no confidence that this current crop of CEO's know the value of our hard earned dollars. Yesterday the Dow dropped below 7,000 for the first time in twelve years.

The post Edward Liddy appeared first on Larry Roibal.

Martin J Sullivan became CEO of the world's largest insurer in 2005. Almost immediately AIG was saddled with three massive hurricanes and a South Asia earthquake, but it was not an act of God that was the last straw, it was the man made subprime mortgage crisis and Sullivan was forced out in June of this year.

The post AIG Deathwatch? appeared first on Larry Roibal.