THE GUARDIAN: Nine of the top 10 recipients of controversial bonuses at the insurer AIG have pledged to hand back the money following a public and political outcry over multimillion-dollar rewards at the crisis-stricken company.
New York state's attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, revealed last night that most of the biggest winners from a controversial "retention scheme" at AIG have succumbed to pressure by forsaking their awards.
Of those working at AIG's financial products division, which ran up vast losses on toxic derivatives, 15 of the 20 top bonus winners are giving back the money.
Cuomo said: "A number of them have risen to the occasion and I applaud them."
The money being returned amounts to $30m out of the bonus scheme's total payout of $165m. Cuomo, speaking on a conference call, revealed that about $80m of the total went to Americans. Some of the rest is likely to have gone to British staff at AIG's key financial products office in London.
He expressed a hope that more bonuses would be returned and said he expected his office to recoup about $80m. >>> Andrew Clark in New York | Tuesday, March 24, 2009
