by Asgeir Hoem in Issue 3: Interference (20 March 2009)
The American Insurance Group is currently in the middle of what has been called a growing political firestorm, after allowing payouts of $165 million from government aid in bonuses to their executives. “People are right to be angry. I’m angry,” said president Obama this Wednesday. AIG, which has received a whopping $180 billion in a tax payer funded bailout the last six months, is now asking the people who received more than $100,000 to return half.
Edward Liddy, chief executive since September last year, said the payouts were necessary to keep top employees with specialised knowledge within the firm. The biggest single payout was $6.4 million, and the top ten payouts accounted for $42 million of the total bonuses. 73 people received more than one million.
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has requested a list of names of the recipients. “If AIG has nothing to hide and is not embarrassed about these payments, they should turn over the list now. The era of shrouding huge bonuses in secrecy must end,” Cuomo says.
“What’s the.. what’s the big deal? It’s a tenth of one percent of the money we gave them for sucking.”
- Jon Stewart
