Maurice R. Greenberg

Maurice Raymond “Hank” Greenberg (born May 4, 1925) is an American business executive and former chairman and chief executive officer of American International Group (AIG).

Greenberg was born into a Jewish family in Greenwich Village, New York City.

His father, Jacob Greenberg, died when Hank was six and his mother, Ada Rheingold, married a dairy farmer.

Greenberg served in the United States Army in Europe during World War II, participating in Operation Overlord at Normandy, the liberation of Dachau concentration camp, and in the Korean War, rising to the rank of captain.

He received the Bronze Star, and the French Legion of Honour as a result of his military service in the European theatre of World War II.

Greenberg attened the University of Miami, where he was a member of Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity and received his bachelor's degree in 1948.

where he was a member of Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity, In 1950, he obtained his law degree from New York Law School.

He was admitted to the New York Bar in 1953 but did not practice law.

He holds honorary degrees from Brown University, Middlebury College, New York Law School, and The Rockefeller University.

He joined C.V. Starr as vice president in 1960 and was given the additional responsibilities of president of American Home Assurance Company in 1962.

In 1962, Greenberg was named by AIG's founder, Cornelius Vander Starr, as the head of AIG's North American holdings after working for Continental Casualty Company, a unit of CNA in Chicago.

He was elected director of C.V. Starr in 1965, chairman and chief executive officer in 1968 and continues in that role.

Greenberg is also the chairman of the board of directors and managing director of Starr International Company Inc. C.V. Starr and Starr International are collectively known as the Starr Companies.

Greenberg was named the most connected business executive in New York by Crain's New York Business.

In 1968 Starr picked Greenberg as his successor.

In 1987, he appointed Kissinger as chairman of AIG's International Advisory Board.

Greenberg held the position until March 2005, when he retired from AIG and was replaced by Martin J. Sullivan.

Greenberg was a social friend and client of Henry Kissinger.

Under Greenberg’s leadership, Starr has invested more than $1 billion in China since 2005.

Starr led the IPO for the People's Insurance Company of China (PICC), and acquired Dazhong Insurance, the first privatization of a state-owned insurance company.

The New York Attorney General brought civil fraud charges against Greenberg in May 2005, charging him with engaging in fraud to exaggerate AIG’s finances.

In 2008, he appeared on ABC's Good Morning America, criticizing the board of directors of AIG.

According to Reuters, the lawsuit requested $55.5 billion in damages against the government stemming from the government's financial bailout of AIG in 2008.

In August 2009, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Greenberg for his involvement in alleged fraudulent accounting transactions that inflated AIG’s finances.

Without conceding or denying the SEC charges, Greenberg agreed to pay $15 million in penalties.

In an interview with Reactions magazine in March 2010, serialized over three parts, Greenberg stated that he did not condone AIG's strategy of selling non-core assets to pay back the United States government, and believed the terms under which AIG was provided access to bail-out funds needed to be renegotiated.

He is chairman and chief executive officer of C.V. Starr, a global insurance and investment organization that is named for the founder of AIG, Cornelius Vander Starr.

In late 2011, Greenberg's Starr International announced a lawsuit against the federal government.

By the end of 2012, AIG had repaid all of its loans and the government had made a $17.7 billion profit on the AIG equity it had acquired as a result, plus $6.7 billion in interests and fees.

In November 2012, a Manhattan court dismissed Greenberg's claims that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York breached its fiduciary duties to AIG shareholders.

In February 2014, Greenberg led a group through Starr Investment Holdings that acquired health insurance claims processor MultiPlan Inc. for around $4.4 billion.

Following a trial in Fall 2014, the Court of Federal Claims ruled in June 2015 that the federal government acted without authority, but did not award any damages.

On appeal, US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit threw out the original case, ruling that Starr lacked standing to bring the case, holding that standing belonged solely to AIG, which had not sued.

The ruling was upheld in appeals court in January 2014.

This group, on May 5, 2016, sold MultiPlan Inc. to Hellman & Friedman for approximately $7.5 billion.

On September 13, 2016, the fraud case against Greenberg came to trial in a state courthouse in Lower Manhattan.

The New York State trial counsel said a guilty verdict was needed to "send a message to CEOs of other companies" that "you can’t do this sort of thing."

The case was resolved on February 10, 2017, subject to a settlement in which Greenberg admitted to fraud and agreed to pay $9 million.

The Supreme Court declined in 2018 to review the case.

The market value of the 79.9% of AIG common stock the government acquired on the day the government agreed to loan AIG up to $85 billion was $55.4 billion.