Eleven executives who received lavish bonuses of at least $1 million from American International Group (AIG) have quit their jobs.
"Eleven of the individuals who received 'retention' bonuses of one million dollars or more are no longer working at AIG, including one who received 4.6 million dollars," New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said in a letter to Barney Frank, chairman of the financial services committee in the US House of Representatives.
The government has provided $180 billion in taxpayer money to help AIG stay in business and now owns nearly 80 percent of the insurance company.
Cuomo said his office found that AIG had paid more than $160 million in bonuses to employees at the company's Financial Products Subsidiary 'whose performance led to crushing losses and the near failure of AIG'.
| Then again, as Tom Maguire notes at Just One Minute, AIG had all sorts of business, some of which were actually profitable, and the guys who quit might have been the guys who knew how to save the company. |
He added that the top bonus recipient at AIG last year received more than $6.4 million and the top 10 received a total of $42 million. "Thus, last week, AIG made more than 73 millionaires in the unit which lost so much money that it brought the firm to its knees, forcing a taxpayer bailout," Cuomo said.
Iowa's senior senator Charles Grassley said on Tuesday that the AIG executives should either resign or commit suicide for the damages they have inflicted on the company.
The government-appointed AIG boss Edward Liddy claimed in a Saturday letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner that the bonuses were necessary to retain 'the best and brightest talent'.
The issue of retention payments to AIG employees has been under question since the group was bailed out in mid-September and received nearly $1 billion in retention payments for 2008 and 2009. |