AIG CEO apologizes to Cummings for lynching remark

AIG CEO apologizes to Cummings for lynching remark


American International Group Chief Executive Robert Benmosche met with Rep. Elijah Cummings on Friday to apologize for comparing the outrage over employee bonuses paid by the bailed out insurer to lynchings that occurred in the South decades ago.

Benmosche told the Wall Street Journal in September that the uproar over bonuses handed out in March 2009 “was intended to stir public anger, to get everybody out there with their pitch forks and their hangman nooses, and all that — sort of like what we did in the Deep South.”

Following the interview’s publication, Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee that investigated the bonuses, immediately called on Benmosche to resign.

“In our meeting, I apologized for my reference to the South and the impact that it had on him and others,” Benmosche said in a statement released on Friday.

Benmosche took over the top job at AIG in 2009 after the federal government spent billions of dollars to bail out the company, which was on the brink of failure because of massive losses in its derivatives unit. The company has since paid back the government.

“I explained to Rep. Cummings that I was responding to a reporter’s question about certain actions I felt were wrong at the time of the financial crisis: that what stood out to me was the enormous fear AIG employees felt about their safety and the safety of their families because people in positions of public responsibility were actively encouraging the vilification of our people,” Benmosche said in his statement.

Benmosche has previously publicly apologized for the comment.

“The American taxpayers rescued AIG and saved the financial system threatened by AIG’s reckless actions, and obviously any comparison of lynchings with efforts to protect taxpayer funds is offensive and misguided,” Cummings said in a statement. “I take Mr. Benmosche’s actions today as recognition of these facts, and I appreciate and accept his sincere apology to me and to the taxpayers of this country.”



Read more: www.politico.com/story/2013/10/aig-ceo-elijah-cummings-remark-98193.html#ixzz2hRbKWz8N