Amidst the ongoing furor over its multi-million-dollar bonus plan, American International Group has released a list of financial institutions it paid with proceeds from the federal bailout.
The map below, which shows institutions receiving the payments and other interested parties, illustrates the global reach of AIG’s problems. Several recipients of bailout money from AIG had already received direct bailout funds from the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program.
Leading the list of the financial firms paid by AIG was Goldman Sachs, whose former chairman, Hank Paulson, was Treasury secretary at the time of the AIG bailout. Goldman was paid $12.9 billion.
Other U.S. beneficiaries included Merrill Lynch ($6.8 billion), Bank of America ($5.2 billion), Citigroup ($2.3 billion) and Wachovia ($1.5 billion).
Foreign banks paid from bailout funds included Societe Generale of France, Deutsche Bank of Germany and UBS of Switzerland.
Our map also shows the prominence of Sullivan & Cromwell Chairman H. Rodgin Cohen. As Muckety noted in a September story about the Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac bailout, Cohen is often “the first person called in times of bank failure, acquisitions or mergers.”
AIG’s release of the company list came amidst growing outrage over the company’s plans to pay hundreds of million dollars in executive bonuses.
President Obama has angrily denounced the plan, ordering Treasury to “pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses.” New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo had demanded the names of executives receiving the payments.
New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin, on the other hand, suggests that the taxpaying public should probably just accept the plan. “AIG built this bomb, and it may be the only outfit that really knows how to defuse it.” he writes.
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