AIG's chief being treated "aggressively" for cancer

Oct 26, 2010, 0:51 GMT

Washington - Robert Benmosche, the American International Group (AIG) Inc chief executive credited with steering the company into calmer waters, is undergoing 'aggressive chemotherapy' for cancer, according to a statement issued Monday by the company.

Benmosche, 66, who is focussed on returning the government-bailed- out insurance giant to independence, said in a statement that he continued to work according to 'my normal schedule' and was overseeing an 'established, clear roadmap to repay taxpayers.'

'The good news is that I feel fine,' he said.

AIG owes the US government 180 billion dollars after Washington kept the world's largest insurance company afloat as the financial crisis broke in autumn of 2008.

Just last week, AIG hived off 58.4 per cent of the shares in its pan-Asian life-insurance business AIA Group Ltd in an initial public offering that netted 17.8 billion dollars.

Benmosche said the move in Hong Kong represented 'extraordinary progress on a key asset divestiture.'

Robert 'Steve' Miller, chairman of AIG's board, said in the same statement that directors were engaging in 'appropriate contingency planning to ensure management continuity.'

AIG did not specify what kind of cancer Benmosche is suffering from.

Benmosche, who took the AIG reins in August 2009, is credited with moves that boosted AIG stock values by 37 per cent this year, with stabilizing credit ratings and hiring top managers, Bloomberg financial news service reported.

AIG was in the vortex of the financial crisis after it speculated on the ever riskier mortgages being granted by banks to people who could not afford them. This caused home prices to rocket, inviting more speculation, pulling the bottom out of the finance and mortgage markets and triggering a global recession that ended in June 2009.

The US government has spent at least 1 trillion dollars bailing out the finance and mortgage industries, another 800 billion dollars trying to stimulate the stagnant job market, and other tranches of money on propping up General Motors and other companies.

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