AIG's Relationship with Three Starr Entities
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SM SCHIFFThe world’s most dangerous’ insuranceS publication March 30, 2005 Volume 17 • Number 8 INSURANCE OBSERVER AIG’s Relationship with Three Starr Entities Conflicts of Interest excess casualty, primarily for AIG’s insur- fact that practices are longstanding, how- ance companies. Starr is located in AIG’s ever, does not make them right for the pre- IG is an inherently complex cor- offices and shares employees with AIG. sent time. Since corporate America has fi- poration. Because of its unusual In 2003, it received $173 million (forty- nally entered the Age of Transparency, it’s relationships with three affiliated seven percent of its revenues) from AIG. reasonable to assume that AIG’s relation- Aentities—Starr International Starr is owned by AIG’s most senior cur- ships with the Starr entities will change— Company, Inc. (SICO), C.V. Starr & Co., rent and former employees. AIG’s board probably soon. Inc. (Starr), and the Starr Foundation—it of directors does not decide how Starr On the following pages we will exam- is all the more complex. Each Starr entity compensates AIG employees. Greenberg ine AIG’s relationships with the three is a significant shareholder of AIG stock is Starr’s president and CEO. Starr entities and provide some of the his- (collectively, they own 412,409,172 shares The Starr Foundation, which owns tory behind the relationships, as well as worth approximately $23.5 billion), and 2.05% of AIG, was created by C.V. Starr, some history of AIG. each is majority-owned or controlled by who founded what is now AIG. retired AIG officers, with Hank Greenberg is chairman of the foundation. n 1919, Cornelius Vander Starr, an ad- Greenberg serving as chairman, president, Its president, Florence Davis, was previ- venturous twenty-seven-year-old from or director. AIG does not own any of the ously AIG’s general counsel. All of the IFort Bragg, California, formed an in- Starr entities. foundation’s directors were once officers surance agency in Shanghai called For decades, AIG’s directors have not of AIG. The foundation makes about American Asiatic Underwriters. The busi- objected to AIG’s transactions and rela- ness grew rapidly as a foreign underwriting tionships with the Starr entities. The exis- manager for a pool of American and tence of the three Starr entities has never European insurance companies. Starr been a secret, but much of what they do formed a life-insurance company in China has not been disclosed to the public, nor and eventually expanded into Latin have many intercompany conflicts of in- America and Europe, and, after World War terest been disclosed to AIG’s sharehold- II, into Japan and the Philippines, creating ers. Although the conflicts of interest are a loosely-knit amalgam of international important, one cannot make a sweeping Starr International Company, Inc. life-insurance, reinsurance, underwriting, statement that all of them are detrimental and brokerage operations under the aegis to AIG and its shareholders. But they are $220 million of charitable grants per year, of C.V. Starr & Co. and American problematic for a variety of reasons (which including scholarships to children of International Underwriters (AIU). we will get to eventually). Here’s an out- AIG’s employees throughout the world. It In 1952, Starr and his associates sold line of the flow of money or business be- has also made significant grants to organi- control of U.S. Life to Continental tween AIG and the Starr entities: zations run by AIG directors. (In 2003, Casualty for about four million dollars. A SICO, which owns 11.94% of AIG, is a Schiff’s published an exposé about $36.5 few months later, Starr’s Bermuda-based Panamanian company with headquarters in million in grants that the foundation gave American International Reinsurance Bermuda. It is apparently used as a de- to the American Museum of Natural Company (AIRCO) bought control of the ferred-compensation program for about 700 History shortly after the museum’s presi- Globe & Rutgers Fire Insurance of AIG’s current and former employees. dent, Ellen Futter, joined AIG’s board of Company, which was merged into its sub- AIG’s board of directors does not decide directors. AIG never disclosed that sidiary, American Home Assurance how SICO compensates AIG’s employees. Greenberg, through the Starr Foundation, Company, three years later. Greenberg oversees SICO and is a director was one of Futter’s major benefactors.) Starr was a hard worker who had a of the company. SICO has also acted as a The Starr entities are, to some extent, great grasp of his organization’s details. He secret “finite” reinsurer of AIG business. a legacy of AIG’s predecessor companies, inspired loyalty in his employees, and Starr, which owns 1.81% of AIG, is an and their relationships with AIG date back made many of them partners in his busi- underwriting manager that specializes in to 1967, when AIG was incorporated. The nesses. He was also a world-traveling SCHIFF’S INSURANCE OBSERVER • 300 CENTRAL PARK WEST, NEW YORK, NY 10024 • (212) 724-2000 • DAVID@INSURANCEO BSERVER. COM bon vivant who did things in grand style. REGISTER NOW He started an English-language newspa- per in China, built up a ski resort in Vermont (Stowe), sent American skiers to ‘A Vast Wasteland’ the Olympics, put on a production of Madame Butterfly at the Metropolitan PRESENTING THE ANNUAL Opera, created a golf course by his house in Brewster, and paid for the college tu- SCHIFF’S ition of some of his employees’ children. After his death, his estate went to the Starr INSURANCE CONFERENCE Foundation. In 1960, when he was sixty-eight, Starr Tuesday, April 12, 2005 hired thirty-five-year-old Hank 8:30 am - 5:30 pm Greenberg as vice president of C.V. Starr New York City & Co. Although Starr’s companies were filled with many long-tenured executives, Registration fee: Greenberg, who was younger than the others, quickly moved toward the top. $695 for subscribers In 1967, AIRCO formed AIG as a $745 for non-subscribers holding company for its interests in the Call (434) 977-5877 for more American Home and New Hampshire in- information, or reserve a place now. surance companies, both of which were members of the AIU pool that Starr wrote [email protected] business for. The following year, AIRCO http://www.snlcenter.com/schiff/spring2005/intro.asp transferred American Life Insurance Company (ALICO) to AIG. AIG also ac- quired a controlling interest in National 9:00 a.m. David Schiff, editor of Schiff’s Insurance Observer, will tell you what Union (which was a member of the AIU he’s riled up about these days. Throughout the conference he will, as always, pool). interrogate the speakers and force them to answer brazen questions. During 1967 and 1968 there was a skir- 9:30 a.m. In June 1994, Schiff’s wrote an admiring profile of Christopher Davis, portfolio mish for control within Starr’s organiza- manager of the Davis Funds,which had $300 million under management. (Chris tion. At that time the organization’s key is the only money manager we’ve ever profiled.) We picked a winner. The Davis people included Houghton Freeman, Funds now manage $40 billion, and the firm’s primary fund has outperformed the Greenberg, Edwin Manton, Francis S&P 500 during every meaningful period since its inception in 1969. Chris will tell us about the Davis’s sixty-year history of investing in the insurance business, and Mulderig, John Roberts, Ernest Stempel, share his thoughts on the mutual-fund industry, shareholder activism, and more. K. K. Tse, Gordon Tweedy, and William 10:40 a.m. Youngman. One faction wanted to sell out, Two years after receiving his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard, 27-year-old James Stone became the youngest insurance commissioner ( Massachusetts) and the other, led by Greenberg, wanted in history. Four years later, in 1979, Jimmy Carter appointed him as chairman to expand. Starr, who was quite sick and of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. When his term ended in 1983, would die at the end of 1968, is said to he moved back to Boston and founded The Plymouth Rock Company, a have chosen Greenberg as his successor, privately-held insurance holding company that now writes well over $1 billion although there are those who say that in premiums—quite profitably. Jim will share his perspective on auto insurance, Greenberg ultimately edged Starr out of regulation, public policy, and being an entrepreneur in the insurance business. the business. 11:20 a.m. William Koenig is Senior Vice President and Chief Actuary of “the quiet On August 19, 1968, four months be- company,” Northwestern Mutual.Bill will give us his perspective about fore Starr died, The New York Times carried reserving—especially when it involves universal-life products with secondary an article, “C.V. Starr & Co. Elects guarantees. His comments, which will not be quiet, should leave some members Leaders.” Below the headline were two of the insurance industry feeling worried. photographs: one of Gordon B. Tweedy Noon Lunch: Decent food, fine conversation. and the other of Greenberg. “C.V. Starr & 1:00 p.m. Andrew Kaufman, a founding partner of Kaufman Borgeest & Ryan Co., Inc., international insurance man- LLP, is one of the leading attorneys specializing in the defense of health-care agers, announced over the weekend the providers and hospitals. He’s tried more than sixty cases to verdict, and is the election of Gordon B. Tweedy as chair- past president of the New York State Medical Malpractice Defense Bar and past man and Maurice R.