
Guest Speaker Maurice "Hank" Greenberg
Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, former CEO of American International Group, speaks to Robert Shiller's Financial Markets course at Yale. He opens with his Army service in World War II and Korea and his start as a junior underwriter, then describes meeting Cornelius Vander Starr, rebuilding the failing American Home insurer, and building AIG through global expansion and products like political risk and kidnap ransom insurance. He recalls a management culture he calls a band of brothers, then turns to Eliot Spitzer's role in his 2005 departure from AIG and the events leading to the government bailout during the 2007-2008 financial crisis, offering his own account of what went wrong and criticism of the government's response. A question and answer session covers the insurance market in China, his view of successor CEO Robert Benmosche, and the Dodd-Frank Act. The talk runs just over an hour with timestamped chapters.