American International Group, the insurer bailed out by the U.S., suspended all its lobbying and canceled about 160 events with a total cost of $80 million after lawmakers criticized the company’s spending.
The insurer will still monitor legislation “to determine what impact it might have on us,” said Nicholas Ashooh, a spokesman for New York-based AIG.
Congressional members lambasted AIG for hosting a $440,000 gathering at a California resort days after the $85 billion federal bailout.
“We reviewed all meetings we could find,” Ashooh said. “The challenge is to find other ways of operating that are less expensive.”
AIG, once the world’s largest insurer, is adjusting to its new majority owner, the U.S. government. The company, which has to sell units to repay its loan, agreed with New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo last week to halt a $10 million severance payment to former chief financial officer Steven Bensinger and to help Cuomo potentially retrieve other executives’ compensation.
Separately, AIG’s payments on credit-default swaps tied to Lehman Brothers will be about $6.2 million, Ashooh said.
AIG’s cost of protecting the debt of the failed investment bank “has been grossly overstated by some,” he said.
