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AIG junket - the movie! Bailed-out execs luxuriate on tape
November 14th, 2008, 6:30 am · 22 Comments · posted by Teri Sforza, Register staff writer
Undercover reporters for ABC News KNXV snuck into last weekend’s festivities at the chi-chi Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak Resort in Phoenix and planted secret cameras - poolside - catching AIG mucky-mucks leaving the spa with towels around their necks and overhearing hotel staffers confess that all AIG signs were verboten and they were forbidden to utter the company’s name (in a Lord Voldermort sort of way). Check out the ABC News video here - it’s a hoot!
This, of course, happens just as the government ups the bailout of insurance giant American International Group to $150 billion, from $123 billion. You, dear taxpayers, now own 80 percent of AIG - but you do not get a massage.
The bill for the Phoenix junket: $343,000, almost exactly what an AIG subsidiary spent on a junket at our very own St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort shortly after the bailout. AIG says 90 percent of the Phoenix meeting’s cost will be covered by others (see AIG’s official statement below), and that its efforts have been “grossly micharacterized.”
Today is a day The Watchdog has long been waiting for: AIG must deliver an exhaustive load of potentially mortifying documents to the powerful Congressional Committee on Government Oversight. Included, we hope, will be the bills for the Washington D.C. weekend/party for 820 that an AIG subsidiary threw at the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum just days after the bailout.
While the committee plows through the documents, we’ll be asking you to guess how much a weekend in Washington D.C. for 820 people cost. The winner will get a prize! Our guess is that the total will be a lot more than $343,000.
More Watchdog:
- AIG subsidiary parties in style in OC, two weeks after bailout
- Yet another AIG subsidiary parties hearty days after bailout
- High-flying AIG subsidiary gets to play with Uncle Sam’s dough, too
- Truth or dare? AIG ordered to bare all its secrets
- Should feds have let AIG go bankrupt?
- Bailed-out banks ordered to reveal executive compensation
- Oops. That $123 billion may not be enough, AIG says
- AIG suspends controversial executive payouts worth millions
- Invisible sponsor of OC wine event: AIG
- AIG calls off lobbyists, cancels events totalling $80 million
- AIG’s “outrageous expenditures” cause more trouble
- AIG’s St. Regis blowout bill: $443,344
- Saturday Night Live skewers AIG excesses
- Obama on AIG’s $400,000 party: ‘Fire the scoundrels!’
- Cartoon zinger lampoons AIG bailout
- Prez didn’t push for bailout so execs could get facials
NEW YORK–Nov. 11, 2008–Edward M. Liddy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of American International Group, has issued the following statement:
“Recent news reports have grossly mischaracterized an American International Group seminar for 150 independent financial planners held in Phoenix last week.
The financial planners are not AIG employees. In addition, the cost to AIG for this event was minimal. More than 90 percent of the costs were paid either by sponsors or by the independent financial planners themselves.
It is essential for AIG to conduct seminars of this kind to keep independent financial planners abreast of investment products and services including those offered by AIG. The financial planners are responsible for generating almost $200 million in revenue this year for AIG as of September 30th.
On October 10, I issued a directive to all AIG employees and subsidiaries to reduce expenses and conserve cash, including cancelling all nonessential conferences or meetings, unnecessary travel and excessive overhead. Since then, we have canceled more than 160 events. We conducted a top-to-bottom review of all expenses of the Phoenix meeting in advance and found that it was consistent with my October 10th directive. This conference was approved because it provides the kind of communication we must conduct with the people who sell our products if we are to be successful and repay the U.S. taxpayer.”
(We promised The Watchdog editor to keep the AIG stories to a minimum, but it’s just so HARD!)
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This is easily proven, or disproven. There is a cost of doing business, but then what would a congressman who most likely never had a real job know about that.
My wife was let go from this company so those mother @#$Kers can piss away money like that. Every one of those POS bastards need to be publicly hanged for what they are doing to hard working people that have bills to pay and years with that company. I won’t be surprised if they start to be taken out by the people they screwed over. What goes around comes around, Watch your backs….
It absolutely turns my stomach the way AIG keeps rubbing these junkets in our faces! Enough already!! Washington? Are you listening???
I would suggest Mr. Liddy personally check into these type of essential meetings. You can issue all the statements you want and perhaps it is a “mischaracterized” meeting, but this is not the first “mischaracterized” meeting and people are fed up with excuuses.
This conference was approved because it provides the kind of communication we must conduct with the people who sell our products if we are to be successful and repay the U.S. taxpayer.” Excuse me if I find this hard to believe!
So the CEO said:” The financial planners are not AIG employees.” and the event was for the planners.
Notice he didn’t say if any employees where there or not…
Sounds like a slick willey statement to me. Whats next? He’s going to claim that government lent dollars are different than other dollars when he gets his multi million bonus & show the serial numbers on the bills are different?
Wow… Washington should just take their money back..!
Everyday Americans are struggling just to buy food and these jerks are partying on the money we keep giving them. Enough already! Let them sink.
I like how he said they were not AIG employee’s, however the costs to AIG were minimal and most of if was sponsored. Let us be the judge’s of that and show us the financing.
We should not have bailed them out! They need to be prosecuted. Let them get a bail amount like Mike Vic and have these big wigs pay back what’ they have taken.
TAKE THE MONEY AWAY!
ALL OF IT!
I’m in the Insurance Industry, and many of the companies that I represent, are doing their training and product introductions via Webinars and conference calls. Why should AIG feel that they need to go to these Resorts to conduct business that can be done via technology?
He has issued a directive to cancel all NON ESSENTIAL conferences and meetings. Would he please give us the meaning of non essential.
Also who pays for the transportation costs to and from these events, that is undoubtedly going to triple ( at least) the basic costs that are published.
A request to Mr. Liddy: Please watch the ABC News Video and explain to us what has been ” grossly mischaracterized.” As Diane Sawyer said, your employees obviously now how sensitive this is because they attempted to hide the meeting. You went to Congress and begged for a bailout, yet you still hold lavish “meetings” you feel are necessary to attract business. It didn’t work before…why would it work now? Mr. Liddy, you are either very gullible or you just do not care what the public thinks. And US Congress…who is in control?How many more of these “meetings” wil we see before something is done? Are there no sanctions or penalties? I would have expected Congress to recall the bailout money.
CORRECTION: “…know how sensitive this is because…”
HEY LIDDY- HAVE THE JUNKETS IN LESS DESIREABLE, INEXPENSIVE LOCATIONS AND FEW WILL CARE. PLEASE UNDERSTAND, “YOU ARE MESSING WITH OUR MONEY NOW.”
This is why none of these co.’s should be bailed out. By doing so nothing changes, no lessons are learned. These Jholes need to be out on their buts on the streets.
Why must these people go to 5 star resorts. The Holiday Inn has nice banquet rooms. The taxpayers get screwed again. Karma is a bitch Mr.Edward M. Liddy.
wow, another retreat for AIG…This is what our country has turned to…the best you can do is join the game…what a bunch of bafoons…that’s america for you
They were still going to luxury hotels as of yesterday. I over heard a party planner at an expensive hotel discussing arrangements for AIG.
Just goes to show how dumb AIG execs are. They’ll be thrown in jail sooner or later.
Maybe it is time to also focus on the “independent financial planners” that attend these “due diligence conferences.” They are the conduit, the pipeline that feed investor’s money into these companies. They have a fiduciary responsbility to act in the best interests of their clients, but it seems like many may be acting only in their own self interests. Do you think these so called “top producers” arrive at the conference because they are producing the top results for their clients? Obviously, as is “common industry practice,” these are the top Salesmen. These are the “certified and independent” planners that are responsible for funneling the “$200 million of business” - read that as their client’s hard earned cash - into AIG without understanding AIG’s business model. Oh, and maybe one should look at the outside sponsors. I am sure they do not include the “broker dealers” and “insurance agencies” that receive “marketing allowances” from AIG and to which the “independent” advisors are affiliated. We will know the industry has changed when “advisors” are honored for the results they produce for their clients, not for the “assets under management” they control. Someday, perhaps the American Taxpayer, the Media and Contract Holders will realize that AIG’s true customer (as is the case for most insurance companies) is the Salesmen that bring them the cash!
I don’t know about you but I feel that the US Government let me down and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. . We are being stuck with the price tag for AIG and these Execs just continue to waste money that you and I will have to pay through taxes. Have any of these AIG execs turned down their bonuses for performing so poorly that their company would go under without the help of the US Government? Do you see a pattern? The bailout money is insuring that the lavish spending continues and there is no accountablity for excessive bonuses or executive offsites. I think it is time that we hold our government representatives accountable for what isn’t being accomplished on our behalf.
This latest junket by AIG’s profitable aircraft leasing unit International Lease Finace Corp who celebrated their 35th anniversary with a trip to our capital for 820 people at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum is just one more time AIG and their subsidaries waste taxpayers money in the 1.5 million range. A party to this extent would have to cost well over a million. My guess would be somewhere in the 1.525 million range. It is such a waste while people are losing their homes and jobs and barely making it they flant money that they borrowed in such an obscene way. Hopefully someone will put a stop to this when the bills come in and they realize what a joke these bailouts really are. Why aren’t they helping the middle class who lost their jobs/homes?? It would costs less and most would not waste it on executive bonuses and parties.