Following the blue-ribbon money

New York Times columnist Floyd Norris has a great post on his blog about the money behind the blue-ribbon Committee on Capital Markets Regulation that's pushing to relax corporate governance regulations. Turns out that the panel's biggest funder is none other than Hank Greenberg, the former and longtime CEO of the world's largest liability insurer, AIG. 

Greenberg, as you may know, has also been one of the nation's richest and meanest tort reformers, dumping tons of money into groups working for lawsuit restrictions, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Manhattan Institute. In 2003, before he had to resign in the face of business fraud allegations, Greenberg said publicly that his company and other investors should stop buying municipal bonds in states that refuse to pass tort reform--an enormously powerful threat given the size of AIG and its affiliates (some run by Greenberg's sons).

A year later, he caught fire for referring to plaintiffs lawyers as terrorists. Given his funding for the "blue-ribbon" panel, its calls for more limits on shareholder lawsuits and corporate investigations by state attorney generals should surprise exactly no one.

Comments

[Justinian Lane]

If memory serves, Hank also transferred $2 billion into his wife's name shortly after a criminal investigation commenced. He's a real class act.

[Greedy Trial Lawyer]

At least my source of funding is obvious to everyone. Ironically, I also receive quite a bit from AIG but not always in voluntary payments.