Maurice Greenberg, the former chairman of American International Group Inc., says the company executives who recently received retention bonuses do not deserve the cash.
The AIG Financial Products Corp. executives responsible for the units should receive the money, Greenberg said Tuesday on PBS, on "The Charlie Rose Show."
At AIG, there was an agreement that the parent company would put up some of the money to be invested and AIG Financial Products would put up the rest, Greenberg said.
It is unfathomable how, after AIG Financial Products lost money, AIG should be paying the executives anything, Greenberg said.
"Why would you then give them a bonus to make up for what they lost?" asked Greenberg. "Where is the equality of that?"
He said there is no reason to provide an incentive to retain the executives, because they have nowhere to go. If the executives did leave. they "could have been replaced very quickly."
Greenberg, who was forced out of his job in 2005 over an accounting scandal but retains a large stake in AIG, said that after AIG lost its AAA rating it should have stopped trading in credit default swaps.
If the company had done so it would be fine today, Greenberg said.
