Podcast Center
Video Center
Webcasts
Resource Center
Events
October 10, 2008 at 12:15 PM
Members of Congress are continuing to criticize a sales meeting American International Group Inc. held in California.
A unit of AIG, New York, held the meeting, which was planned long before AIG ran into serious financial problems, in late September at the St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, Calif., to reward top producers.
Rep. Harry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, called the meeting a “retreat” at a hearing Tuesday and attacked AIG for spending tens of thousands of dollars on expenses such as spa fees shortly after getting access to an $85 billion emergency credit line from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
AIG later pointed out that the retreat was held to court independent distributors, not to pamper its own executives, but members of Congress are continuing to attack the event.
Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has called the Monarch Beach event a “scandal and an outrage.”
“If AIG was throwing money around for tee times and hot stone massages while begging for Federal Reserve dollars, it’s a scandal and an outrage and heads will roll,” Baucus has written in a letter sent to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.
