Man, if this keeps up, I'll need to put in a request for a name change ;)
Posted on 03/31/2005 2:11:41 AM PST by Liz
Red-faced and reeling insurance giant AIG admitted yesterday its balance sheet reflected shoddy accounting going back as far as 14 years.
The improper treatment of dozens of reinsurance deals, with Warren Buffett's General Re and other companies, resulted in shareholder equity being inflated by as much as $1.7 billion, or 2 percent of market capitalization, the company said.
AIG said the accounting for the deals with General Re in 2000 and 2001 "was improper" because there was no evidence any transfer of risk existed.
The mea culpa comes less than 24 hours after Buffett went on the offensive and declared that he wasn't fully briefed on what AIG's Hank Greenberg planned to do with the finite insurance deals.
The SEC, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and the state insurance department are each probing AIG's deals to lay off some insurance exposure to reinsurance companies.
Hank Greenberg, who headed the No. 1 insurance company for nearly 40 years, was forced from his CEO position earlier this month and will resign as chairman when he returns to the country from a trip to Asia.
While the false accounting for the non-insurance deal would have a minimal effect on the company's net worth, it is certain to rip a gaping hole in the company's reputation.
"The depth and breadth of troubles and apparent lack of accounting controls at AIG is alarming," William Wilt, who follows AIG for Morgan Stanley, said in a note to investors.
......AIG said it had no idea that Union Excess, a Barbados-based insurer that AIG subsidiaries did business with, was not an independent company.
In the Byzantine, interlocking corporate world created by Greenberg, AIG recently discovered that a "significant portion" of the interests of Union Excess shareholders are tied indirectly to the business of Starr International Co......
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Tsk, tsk, too bad Warren, a darn shame (/sarc).
Warren BUFFETT, All he can consume in greens, Green Cash that is! KaCHING! $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Maybe if he wasn't so busy supporting the death tax and lying about the coming demise of America, he'd have caught on to the funny business. Of course he knew about it all along.
Bye bye, Orifice of Omaha!!
Great tag, LOL, Orifice of Omaha. Gotta love it when these lefty windbags of commerce get caught, maybe Billy Gates-mouth will come up next?? Another beautiful day in the Great State of SC!
A company called "Union Excess"? That should have raised a red flag.
Ah ha! No wonder AIG's service is so lousy. They must hire incompetent people. In December a lady ran thru a stop sign and hit my car. Fortunately the damage was minor. AIG is her insurance. I had to call them for info and a form, and their staff gave me conflicting info. That is when I could even reach a human being. If I left voice mails, they didn't reply. Some great customer service huh??
The Sage of Omaha was Arnold's chief financial advisor early on. Well, okay, one of his chief advisors-but remember how media made hay out of it? "Wealthy Democrat advises new Republican Governor." Some advise...
Should read ADVICE!
It goes much deeper than lousy service.
I run a small sailplane club from my brother and mines private airport. AIG underwrites policies sold through the Soaring Society of America (SSA). Among these are hull insurance on our members aircraft, my towplane insurance and insurance on the club's rental gliders. We use a general liability waiver between us and our members to attempt to protect our property. AIG recently got wind of our waiver, and even though AIG is not even mentioned in our waiver, they have started to refuse to honor hull insurance on our members aircraft if the members have signed our waiver. It seems that AIG won't insure a person's property unless they have a clear target to come after in the event they have to pay a claim, in this case the target being the airport owners. IMO, this isn't an insurance company at all, but rather a law firm with an escrow account masquerading as an insurance company.
You might want to read this thread.
Nice find, thanks for the link.
You devil, you....
Man, if this keeps up, I'll need to put in a request for a name change ;)
This section, "Red Flags of Treason - People," provides information about the cast of organized crime and money-laundering characters which made up the Clinton Crime Family.
Thanks, alamo girl, for the extentive research.
If he did anything wrong, I should would love for Buffet to ge taken down.
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