Word: greenbergs
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Maurice (Hank) Greenberg has said that all he ever wanted in life was "an unfair advantage," an insurance man's credo that propelled American International Group into a global powerhouse. Greenberg grew up with the now infamous company, becoming a world business power who dined with heads of state and influenced international trade policy - until risk caught up to him four years ago. An accounting scandal forced him to step down from his beloved company...
...odds may be working in Greenberg's favor again. The reported recklessness and greed of his successors at AIG have overshadowed any wrongdoing he is alleged to have committed. Since AIG's collapse last September, sources tell TIME, Greenberg has worked with the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department on a plan to rebuild the company. And today, the 84-year-old tycoon is scheduled to appear as the star witness at a House Oversight Committee hearing on AIG's fall and its economic repercussions. A committee aide called him "an investigative asset" who can further understanding of what happened...
...Greenberg is not likely to escape tough questions. It was Greenberg, after all, who supervised Joseph Cassano, chief of AIG's Financial Products (FP) unit, whose sales of uncollateralized credit-default swaps brought down the company. Representative Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat and committee member, blamed Greenberg for "allowing a culture to develop that completely contradicted the insurance-company ethic of limiting risk." Greenberg, Welch said, is trying to redeem his reputation on the grounds that "he was out the door before the roof fell...
...Here AIG seems an unlikely candidate for the company that could bankrupt the planet. Founded 90 years ago in Shanghai, AIG moved its headquarters to New York City as the world headed toward war in 1939. After Maurice R. (Hank) Greenberg took over in 1967, AIG consolidated its global empire. By the time Greenberg was forced out in an accounting scandal 38 years later, AIG had become one of the world's biggest public companies, with sales of $113 billion in 2006 and 116,000 employees in 130 countries, from France to China...
...rare interview, former CEO Greenberg, who is suing AIG and being sued by the company over financial-management issues, tells TIME that once the company lost its top credit rating, AIG FP should have stopped writing swaps and hedged, or reinsured, its existing ones. But Cassano's unit doubled down after the spring of 2005, writing more and more subprime-linked swaps as the ratings plunged, which made the possible need for collateral enormous in the event its debt was downgraded. The downgrades occurred in 2008. "Of course they were going to run out of money," says Greenberg. He adds...