Word: greenbergs
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Such was Greenberg's clout that after 15 years of contentious negotiations to allow China into the World Trade Organization in 2001, U.S. officials handed off the final sticking point--access to the insurance markets--to...Greenberg. After some tough meetings, he put his demands in a terse letter to Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji, who after reading them angrily summoned one of his top trade representatives and, according to that official, declared, "I would never, never see this...
...short lived. In less than an hour Zhu reconsidered, according to the trade official, Long Yongtu, who told this story at the Institute for International Economics in Washington last month. It was clear to Zhu that Greenberg, a private U.S. citizen with deep knowledge of China, had been given extraordinary authority. So Zhu sent Long to the "Greenberg suite" of a Shanghai hotel partly owned by AIG, and the two began working out the final pieces of a historic trade pact that, incidentally, gave Greenberg what he wanted: the right to keep running wholly owned subsidiaries...
That's the way he operated. Greenberg was legendary for taking his business into countries that no foreigners would try and for underwriting insurance policies that no competitors would risk--and squeezing the most out of every opportunity. His global heft was so valued by the government that in the 1980s he was dispatched on state business to the Philippines, where AIG subsidiary Philippine American Life Insurance is the largest insurer. His mission: make clear to President Ferdinand Marcos that foreign investors were uneasy with the unstable government; he should step down or conduct fair elections. (Marcos didn't listen...
...Lewis, superintendent of the New York Insurance Department in the late 1970s, who had several run-ins with him. "Many times he was right; the department was wrong." In one such case, says Lewis, state lawmakers resisted efforts to ease the regulation of insurance premiums paid by big business; Greenberg argued that these were sophisticated clients who could protect themselves. "He would absolutely get in your face," says Lewis. "But he was right...
...Greenberg was able to persuade foreign leaders and regulators to do his bidding, he was at times a tyrant too. He demanded loyalty and was capable of terrorizing the people who worked for him. "I always prepared myself to the hilt when I was to see him," says Gerard Roche, veteran executive recruiter at Heidrick & Struggles, which has placed executives at AIG. Greenberg liked to keep his meetings short--say, 10 minutes--and quickly lost patience with anyone not prepared. Then would come the famous Greenberg tongue lashing. His former daughter-in-law Nikki Finke, who knew the family throughout...