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Invisible sponsor of OC wine event: AIG
October 22nd, 2008, 7:00 am · 12 Comments · posted by Teri Sforza, Register staff writer
The company’s logo has disappeared from the web site. You’ll no longer see it splashed atop the list of proud sponsors.
But the fact remains that a key sponsor for the Share Our Wine 4th annual Orange County Auction - a charitable event to benefit OC’s Orangewood Children’s Foundation and the Child Guidance Center - is a local subsidiary of embattled American International Group.
AIG jr. paid $25,000 for the sponsorship back in May, Share Our Wine officials said.
Yes, AIG - recipient of more than $120 billion in government loans - has taken immense heat after subsidiaries spent obscene amounts on post-bailout partridge-hunting trips to England and lavish weekends at our very own St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort. The pressure grew so intense that, yesterday, AIG announced the cancellation of 160 meetings and events that would have cost some $80 million.
But the Share Our Wine event is not one of them. All systems go. Full speed ahead. This one is for abused 
kids. You think AIG doesn’t have a heart?!
Though the AIG logos disappeared from the Share our Wine web site after The Watchdog’s inquiry - and none are expected to be displayed at the event itself -SOW is grateful for AIG’s contribution. “This is one of the best uses and highest purposes of corporate contributions - some of the best money that a corporation can spend,” said SOW spokesman Jonathan Wilcox. “It does enormous good.”
AIG stresses that the financial pains of the parent company are not shared by its healthy subsidiaries, which have sponsored many of the contested events. Different pockets and all that.
Said AIG’s Peter Tulupman: “All expenditures like this are currently being reviewed. The company has taken measures to stop our business operations from entering into any new sponsorship or hospitality agreements.”
But this is an old sponsorship agreement. So the sip’n'grip will be held at 5:30 p.m. Nov. 22 at the Orange County Performing ArtsCenter’s Samueli Theater. General admission is $100, VIP admission is $500, and wine donations (minimum value: $50) are being accepted through Halloween. Only 400 tickets will be sold.
In 2006, the SOW event raised $14,135 for the Child Guidance Center, according to SOW’s most recent tax returns. It spent $4,090 on advertising and $914 on tax, license and bank service charges. It’s an all-volunteer effort; no one in the organization is paid.
The 2007 event brought in more than six figures for abused kids, Wilcox said, and this year’s event is expected to bring in even more.
“The reason why is that people want to give,” he said. Orangewood, of course, raises money for children in the county’s foster care program, and is near and dear to local philanthropists’ hearts; while the Children’s Guidance Center takes on the toughest cases, providing treatment to children and families impaired by emotional and behavioral problems.
AIG is going to have to cough up the documents relating to this event - and all the others it has been involved in since January. Congress and New York’s attorney general are probing a series of golden parachutes and lavish events thrown by AIG and its subsidiaries in the days after its government rescue last month. Congress wants to know exactly how AIG is using that $120 billion loan, and AIG must produce a dizzying array of documents by Nov. 14.
More Watchdog:
- AIG calls off lobbyists, cancels events totalling $80 million
- Truth or dare? AIG ordered to bare all its secrets
- AIG’s “outrageous expenditures” cause more trouble
- AIG subsidiary parties in style in OC, two weeks after bailout
- AIG’s St. Regis blowout bill: $443,344
- Saturday Night Live skewers AIG excesses
- Obama on AIG’s $400,000 party: ‘Fire the scoundrels!’
- Yet another AIG subsidiary parties hearty days after bailout
- Cartoon zinger lampoons AIG bailout
- Prez didn’t push for bailout so execs could get facials
- Behind the AIG party: A look at the St. Regis
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Ummm, it’s not AIG’s contribution is it?? Taxpayers are now donating 25K to Orangewood…
LeeLee says “Taxpayers are now donating 25K to Orangewood”. That’s actually not true. The sponsorship was paid for back in May of this year, long before the AIG bailout. So no taxpayer funds were involved.
Further, the sponsorship money came from a subsidiary of AIG, not AIG corporate. The bailout was for AIG corporate. Subsidiaries of AIG weren’t included in the bailout.
Thank you for the correction!
Yep, and in some parts of the Country it’’s called….’Putting Lipstick on a Pig!”
Then why didn’t AIG’s subsidiaries bail out AIG corporate instead of forcing the tax payer to do it?
It still sounds like the taxpayer made that 25K donation to me.
No Central/OC . A subsidary makes no desisions for itself ,it is all driven from Corporate. These are just other ways to hide money and lie to the American people. Because of the greed of these CEO’s the middle class will be gone in ten years. As a result a Republican will never be President of the US again. Thank yourselfs (CEO’s) when taxes go through the roof!!! All CEO’s that can’t explain there books should be jailed….
Great. Go Republicans! To Heck with everyone else. Let ‘em eat cake.
Don’t blame the Republicans McCain tried to stop this befor it happened and Biden, Obama,Clinton Kennedy or any other democrat would put a stop to the affirmative action plans put into Freddy and Fanny by Bill Clinton to help the people with no money get into home ownership..The sad part was President Bush was to weak to get on TV and till it like it was. We all know he is more democrat then Republican just like the governor of California is not a republican.
At least this money is going to good use. Whether the decision to support came from AIG corporate or an affiliate matters little. AIG donating money to support a philantrhopic event is far better than it going to the severance package of an irresponsible CEO. Democrats and Republicans are BOTH at fault for the financial mess. The Share Our Wine Foundation and Orangewood should have no ill will or press because of their sponsor. Both are serving our community at a time when few others think of anyone but themselves.
More of the SAME!!!
So let me see if I understand the AIG situation? Our government on it’s own passed a bailout plan that most US citizens didn’t want passed for a company that is throwing outrageous corporate parties for its executives and its CEO’s are raping the company while US Taxpayers will be on the hook for the bailout when all the smoke clears. It even gets better when I see that employees are now being layed off from AIG? It doesn’t seem right does it? I must be missing something?
hey CentralOC
If the subsidiaries are SO profitable, why couldn’t they bail out AIG? Or to put it more reasonably, why couldn’t AIG stay afloat? It’s real simple CenrtalOC…subsidiaries are called subsidiaries because they are just divisions of the SAME entity! This is as idiotic as borrowing money from your parents because you don’t want to depend on your wife’s income-It’s the SAME HOUSEHOLD!
Now, maybe one division makes more money than another. We know AIG American General makes about 24 times what FSC Securities makes in a year but at the end of the day, NONE of it was enough to keep the company afloat.
In summary, AIG has a few small businesses that make money but their largest bread and butter operation is insolvent. That tells me that even the Mensa society at AIG manage to buy a profitable entity from time to time but at the end of the day, theie entire business is a NET LOSERS!!!