Hank Greenberg on Watching AIG Implode From the Sidelines
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March 5, 2009: Three days after AIG announces a record-breaking $61.7 billion quarterly loss—and Obama announces another $30 billion in aid—the president learns it’s about to pay $165 million in bonuses in the financial products unit that brought down the company
To some people, AIG’s collapse was a bigger shock than Lehman. What about for you?
Remember, I wasn’t running it at that point. When I left in 2005, we were AAA-rated. We had risk controls in place. We met every week and there was special time allotted for AIG Financial Products. They did as much credit-default swaps in the nine months after I left as in the seven years we’d been doing that business.