Ethical Dilemma: American International Group

(AIG) is the largest insurance company in the United States. When AIG faced financial ruin in 2008, the U.S. government used taxpayer money to loan AIG more than $170 billion in exchange for an 80 percent stake in the firm. A few months later, it was revealed that AIG had used part of the money

(at least $30 billion) to pay off banks in Europe, largely for debt obligations it incurred in foreign transactions. U.S. government officials were furious.

The furor intensified when AIG tried to renegotiate loans with some of its U.S. creditors, implying they were less important than the European banks.

Suppose you were the chief financial officer at AIG. What would you have done? How would you handle this predicament? Use the ethical framework in this chapter to analyze how AIG might have handled the situation better.

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