CNNMoney.com
Companies Economy International Corrections Pre-market Trading After-hours Trading Winners/Losers/Actives Bonds Currencies Commodities World Markets Money Magazine Real Estate Taxes Jobs Ask the Expert Money 101 Autos Mutual Funds The Help Desk Loan Center Best Places to Live Ask the Expert Ultimate Guide to Retirement Retirement Calculators Rules of Retirement Best Funds Best Places to Retire Fortune Brainstorm Tech Apple 2.0 Blog Big Tech Blog Sectors and Stocks Tech Talk Resource Guide Small Business Makeovers Questions & Answers Small Business Video 100 Best Places to Launch FSB 100 Fortune Small Business Fortune 500 Brainstorm Tech Investing Management C-Suite Rankings Main Create Portfolio Edit Portfolio Create Alerts Edit Alerts

States want AIG bonus probe expanded

Attorneys General from 11 states say the bailed-out insurance giant paid out nearly four times the amount of bonuses disclosed to Congress.

EMAIL  |   PRINT  |   SHARE  |   RSS
 
google my aol my msn my yahoo! netvibes
Paste this link into your favorite RSS desktop reader
See all CNNMoney.com RSS FEEDS (close)

What investment strategy will you follow for the rest of the year?
  • Aggressively buying stocks
  • Slowly adding more stocks
  • Beefing up bonds and cash
  • Not changing a thing

NEW YORK (Reuters) - -- Eleven states on Friday called for a deeper probe into the $165 million of bonuses that American International Group Inc. awarded employees in a unit whose losses led to a federal bailout of the insurer.

In a letter to Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the attorneys general expressed concern about how much taxpayer money is going toward compensation.

They pointed to AIG having said in May that it paid $454 million of bonuses companywide, nearly four times the amount Congress had been told two months earlier.

"AIG claims the discrepancy is explained by Congress's failure to pose the March compensation question with sufficient precision," New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram wrote in the letter. "Such half-truths, which investors may have relied upon, obviously raise serious questions about the completeness of AIG's characterization of its financial condition."

Milgram asked for a meeting with Barofsky to discuss how regulators can better work to protect investors' interests. Arizona, Delaware, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, Ohio and Texas joined the request.

The bonuses were awarded in AIG's (AIG, Fortune 500) financial products unit, where losses tied to credit default swaps led to a $99.3 billion loss for AIG in 2008. A series of bailouts totaling $180 billion left the government owning an 80% stake in what was once the world's largest insurer by market value.

Barofsky was not immediately available for comment. To top of page

Features
Markets Last Change
Dow Jones 10,520.10 53.66 / 0.51%
Nasdaq 2,285.69 16.05 / 0.71%
S&P 500 1,126.48 5.89 / 0.53%
10-year Bond 96 15/32 Yield: 3.80%
U.S.Dollar 1 euro = $1.437 -0.001
December 24, 2009 12:00 AM ET
CompanyPrice% Change
YRC Worldwide Inc 1.01 6.23%
Freddie Mac 1.26 -3.82%
US Airways Group Inc 5.35 3.50%
Allegheny Technologies Inc 45.68 3.30%
Dec 24 12:43pm ET †
More Galleries
Biggest losers: Where Americans aren't moving Through most of the decade Florida was one of the fastest growing states. But the sunny clime -- and 6 others -- lost more residents than they gained in the year ended July 1. More
8 hot cars: Class of 2000 In just 10 years, the market's changed a lot when it comes to cars. Where are these models now? The Prius became a hit; the Aztek got killed. More
Obama's Main Street favorites President Obama meets often with small business owners, peppering his speeches with their stories. We checked in with 6 entrepreneurs touted by the President to find out how they handle health care. More
Sponsors

Copyright 2009 Reuters All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
© 2009 Cable News Network. A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved. Terms under which this service is provided to you. Privacy Policy. Advertising Practices.
Copyright © 2009 BigCharts.com Inc. All rights reserved. Please see our Terms of Use.
MarketWatch, the MarketWatch logo, and BigCharts are registered trademarks of MarketWatch, Inc.
Intraday data provided by Interactive Data Real-Time Services and subject to the Terms of Use.
Intraday data is at least 20-minutes delayed. All times are ET.
Historical, current end-of-day data, and splits data provided by Interactive Data Pricing and Reference Data.
Fundamental data provided by Morningstar, Inc..
SEC Filings data provided by Edgar Online Inc..
Earnings data provided by FactSet CallStreet, LLC.