The board of AIG was threatened with a criminal charge of fraud against the company itself, they caved and Greenberg, who headed AIG for 37 years, was forced to step down in March 2005 after he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during a Spitzer-led investigation into accounting and other improprieties at AIG..
Spizter’s public deception was further perpetrated on the Sunday "This Week with George Stephanopoulos” in April 2005…
Spitzer, attacked the Greenberg, saying “the evidence is overwhelming” that a series of transactions completed by the company under Greenberg’s watch constituted “fraud,” and that Greenberg could face criminal charges. and said that Mr. Greenberg had committed criminal fraud against shareholders for misstating earnings. But he subsequently failed to file any actual charges.
When Mr. Sptizer instead filed a civil case, the two main pillars of that accusation—that Mr. Greenberg deceived regulators about AIG's offshore reinsurance and that AIG falsely reported income—were eventually withdrawn.
Greenberg has been forced to watch from the sidelines as the company whose name was almost inseparable from his own buckled in the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis. To keep it afloat, the U.S. government fronted AIG, the world’s largest insurer, $182.5 billion.
At the time of Greenberg’s ouster, AIG boasted a market cap of $165 billion and was a Fortune 10 company with sales of $113 billion and more than 115,000 employees operating in 130 countries. In May 2008, the stock traded for a respectable $50/share. For most of 2009, however, AIG stock hovered in the $1.50/share range.
Now, Greenberg is coming back to right the ship—
This kicked off the “grand malaise”, but could it have been avoided had Greenberg remained at the helm>??????
And Spitzer? As much a fraud today as ever, he appears to be in the process of having his reputation ………. Repolished…. While it may have been his hand on the handle, his greed and lust for political office, that actually flushed millions of us down the drain…
No comments:
Post a Comment