Maurice Greenberg is Back

Thursday, October 29, 2009 | 0

By Julius Young

He's baaaaak!

Not that he really ever left.....

That's Maurice Greenberg, who as chairman of AIG presided over the rise of an insurance behemoth.

AIG is everywhere. Several months ago while walking in Shanghai on the banks of the Huangpu River, by "The Bund" (an area that was one of the foreign "concessions" established by the Treaty of Nanjing after the First Opium War), I happened upon the AIG China office. AIG was very active in Asian markets; founder C.V. Starr, a Fort Bragg and Cal Berkeley native, was said to have been an operative of the OSS, predecessor to the CIA.

Here in our state, AIG has long been a major player in the California workers' comp market, with its various subsidiaries.

Greenberg's sons are heavy hitters in the industry. One son was chairman at Marsh & McLennan. The other son, Even Greenberg, is the chief executive officer of Ace. Both these insurers have had a significant presence in the California comp market.

Greenberg was pushed aside by the AIG board. At the time, Greenberg was being pursued by then Governor Eliot Spitzer. That was, of course, before Spitzer's penchant for call girls came to light. Greenberg is still being pursued in various civil suits.

AIG imploded in 2008 as its various involvements in arcane financial products crashed and burned.

Historians and economists may be debating for years why Lehman was allowed to fail but AIG was saved. But saved it was. By you, dear taxpayer. It was deemed an enterprise too big to fail, with connections to the major corporate and political players in the world.

The various state-regulated AIG subsidiaries continued to pay workers comp claims. Despite fears in late 08 it would all melt down, it's largely been business as usual in workers' comp.

Greenberg, in his 80s, has been reassembling his team.

You the taxpayer now own a majority stake in the old AIG, which has been on a mission to restructure itself.

But Greenberg is now competing with your company. He's luring talent from the Uncle Sam-rescued firm for his C. V. Starr company.

One of Greenberg's divisions is C.V Starr California:
http://www.cvstarrco.com/cv/cvstarrco/

And you thought the insurance business was straightforward.

Here's an interesting profile that appears in the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/busin ... ig.html?hp

And the painted ponies go up and down in the circle game.......

Julius Young is an applicants' attorney with the Boxer & Gerson law firm in Oakland, Calif. This column was reprinted with his permission from his blog on California workers' compensation, http://www.workerscompzone.com