WORLD> America
    AIG chairman inherits retention bonus mess
    (Agencies)
    Updated: 2009-03-18 21:18

    WASHINGTON – Edward M. Liddy, chairman and CEO of American International Group Inc. since last fall, has become the reluctant defender of princely employee bonuses that members of Congress - and much of the American public - find indefensible.


    American International Group offices in New York. [Agencies] 

    AIG, the giant insurance company that has received $170 billion in government assistance, is paying more than $200 million in bonuses to keep employees from fleeing its troubled financial products division. On Wednesday, Liddy was to pull up a chair at a congressional witness table and take the heat.

    The retention payments - ranging from $1,000 to nearly $6.5 million - were not his idea. Liddy himself is not getting a bonus. The deals were cut early last year, long before then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson asked Liddy to take over the company.

    "I do not like these arrangements and find it distasteful and difficult to recommend to you that we must proceed with them," Liddy wrote to the current treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, over the weekend.

    But the payments went out. Congress is in a lather and wants the money back. And Liddy, who had been scheduled to testify about AIG before the bonus story took root, is a timely target.

    The clamor over compensation overshadowed AIG's weekend disclosure that it used more than $90 billion in federal aid to pay out to foreign and domestic banks, including some that had multibillion-dollar US government bailouts of their own. AIG is the single largest recipient of government assistance - a company whose financial transactions were so intricate and intertwined that it was considered simply too big to fail.

    Related readings:
     Bonus furor may prompt limits on AIG bailout money
     Livid Democrats demand AIG return bailout bonuses
     AIG bonus payout riles politicians
     Administration, lawmakers turn up heat on AIG over bonuses

    In an essay published Wednesday in The Washington Post, Liddy wrote: "The company's overall structure is too complex, too unwieldy and too opaque for its component businesses to be well managed as one entity. So the strategy we continue to pursue ... is to isolate the value in the company's component parts, capture that value to pay back money owed to the government, and allow AIG's healthy insurance companies to continue to prosper for the benefit of policyholders and taxpayers."

    Lawmakers already were troubled by the idea of an institution that could single-handedly topple the financial system. Now, Liddy will appear before a House Financial Services subcommittee just as lawmakers from both parties are casting his company as the symbol of excess and abuse of taxpayer dollars.

    Meanwhile, Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the Financial Services panel, said he hopes Congress can rewrite a Depression-era law the Federal Reserve used to plow $85 billion into AIG, without conditions and without the need for congressional approval.

    "The federal government is a major owner of this company. We're the owners, not just the regulators, Barney, D-Mass., said Wednesday on CBS's "The Early Show."

    "It is my hope that before much further, we will amend that statute," he said. Frank said the mere existence of the 1932 statute enabling the Fed to make the direct payment rendered a no-strings bailout as "a fait accompli."

    Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat who is on Frank's committee, said that "Congress is going to recoup this money."

    Maloney said this will happen one way or another, "whether it's through taxes, through a contract change. They say you can't change a contract. We change contracts all the time."

    Maloney said on NBC's "Today" show that "we're looking at a number of proposals."

    Congress and the Obama administration on Tuesday appeared to race each other to find ways to strip bonus recipients of their money. The Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus of Montana, and the panel's top Republican, Charles Grassley of Iowa, immediately proposed legislation that would require companies and individuals to pay a 35 percent tax on all retention awards and on all other bonuses over $50,000. Others suggested even higher tax rates.

    "If you don't return it on your own, we will do it for you," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.

       Previous page 1 2 Next Page  

    亚洲av无码成人精品区在线播放 | 亚洲AV无码无限在线观看不卡| 无码国内精品人妻少妇蜜桃视频| 无码人妻精品中文字幕免费东京热| 无码人妻品一区二区三区精99| 日韩中文字幕一区| 国产精品成人无码久久久久久 | 中文字幕精品一区二区日本| 777久久精品一区二区三区无码| 国产成人A亚洲精V品无码| 精品久久人妻av中文字幕| 精品无人区无码乱码毛片国产| 亚洲A∨无码无在线观看| 最近中文2019字幕第二页| 国产中文字幕在线观看| 亚洲AV无码之日韩精品| 久久国产精品无码HDAV | 波多野42部无码喷潮在线| 野花在线无码视频在线播放| 最近更新免费中文字幕大全 | 最近更新免费中文字幕大全| 最近新中文字幕大全高清| 99高清中文字幕在线| 中文字幕无码日韩专区| 中文字幕亚洲男人的天堂网络| 国模无码一区二区三区| 97性无码区免费| 国精品无码A区一区二区| 无码色AV一二区在线播放| 久久无码国产| 久久精品中文无码资源站| 欧美日本道中文高清| 超清无码无卡中文字幕| 最近高清中文字幕无吗免费看| 无码人妻久久一区二区三区蜜桃| 西西4444www大胆无码| 青春草无码精品视频在线观| 无码国模国产在线无码精品国产自在久国产 | 国产精品无码专区在线观看| 精品无码综合一区| 中文字幕无码第1页|