Ex-AIG Honcho Settles New SEC Case for $15M

(NEWSER) - AIG 's longtime CEO sold crucial assets in 2005 out of spite, the company's lawyers charged as they opened their civil suit against the ousted exec today in New York. “Hank Greenberg was mad. He was angry,” said a lawyer for the bailed-out mega-insurer. Greenberg was weeks away from being ousted as CEO when he authorized the sale of shares from a trust fund meant to provide for AIG execs. More»

Government should focus on reducing stake, restructuring firm, former CEO says

(NEWSER) - AIG’s former CEO told Congress today the bailout of the insurance firm has “failed” and that the government should restructure the company, the Wall Street Journal reports. At a House committee hearing, Hank Greenberg said he blamed his successors for the firm’s implosion: "I think they got greedy. I think they wrote considerably more business than they should have." More»

Greenberg files letter with SEC asking for less 'onerous' deal

(NEWSER) - With the Fed now injecting capital directly into Wall Street's spiraling banks, AIG's former chairman worries the company got shafted, the Wall Street Journal reports. The insurer will go under if the government doesn't change its bailout terms from a two-year, high-interest loan to 10-year nonvoting preferred stock, Hank Greenberg says, adding that more recent bailouts come with "terms far less onerous.” More»

They say takeover violated investors' fifth amendment rights

(NEWSER) - Former AIG CEO Hank Greenberg is suing the US government for $25 million for having the effrontery to bail out the dying insurer. Greenberg was ousted in 2005 after allegedly cooking AIG’s books to inflate its value, but still had a keen interest in the company during the bailout, because his firm, Starr International Co., was its largest shareholder. Now Greenberg’s saying that the bailout of the firm violated shareholders’ constitutional rights, the Wall Street Journal reports. More»

Matt Taibbi reports on an insane, probably illegal practice

(NEWSER) - Police aren’t generally in the habit of destroying evidence from failed investigations—but the SEC is, according to one whistleblower. SEC attorney Darcy Flynn spilled the beans to Congress in July, saying that the SEC routinely destroys all documents related to its preliminary investigations if they don’t proceed. That appears to violate federal law, writes Matt Taibbi in a lengthy piece in Rolling Stone , making it “far more than an administrative accident or bureaucratic fuck-up. It's a symptom of the agency's terminal brain damage.” More»