Show Us Your Bonuses: New York's Cuomo to AIG

November 18, 2008— -- New York's Attorney General Andrew Cuomo today demanded that beleaguered insurance giant AIG come clean and disclose its plans for bonuses to corporate executives and pay raises, reminding the firm that there are significant "legal ramifications" to AIG's decision.

It is the latest salvo by Cuomo in his crusade to get financial institutions to cease paying excessive compensation and bonuses to executives even as their banks are being bailed out by taxpayers.

"AIG has already received more than $150 billion in rescue financing and therefore should be completely transparent with taxpayers as to what the company's compensation plans are," the strongly worded letter stated.

Click here to see the letter.

The letter --the latest in a series to AIG from Cuomo -- was sent because AIG had not provided the Attorney General with bonus and compensation information the office had requested. "They were hemming and hawing-- ' we don't know our plans yet, we're still trying to figure that out, we don't want to loose our top people (by not bonusing them),' " a source involved in the investigation said. "It was ridiculous."

"We have received it and we will respond," a spokesman for AIG said of the letter.

It comes one day after Citigroup announced plans to layoff 50,000 employees, and Cuomo called on the $44 billion financial giant to announce quickly that the firm would not bonus its top executives this year. And it follows a decision by Goldman Sachs to cancel hundreds of millions in planned bonuses to its seven top executives, leaving those moguls to scrape by on base pay of $600,000.

"Citigroup should follow Goldman Sachs's lead and announce quickly that top executives will not be receiving bonuses this year," Cuomo said in a statement. The firm had said it would announce its bonus and compensation plans in January. It has not yet responded to the Attorney General's prescriptive remarks, his office said. "It's a triple whammy," a top Cuomo aide said. "The investors are getting killed, the taxpayer is paying the bills and now the employees are getting hurt. Why should executives be rewarded?"