The man in charge of AIG’s doomed Financial Products division in London has defiantly denied taking reckless risks on hefty derivatives contracts that were widely blamed for pushing the huge US insurer to the brink of bankruptcy.
Joseph Cassano, who ran AIG’s financial products unit between 2002 and 2008, will tell the US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission today that his division, widely derided as a hedge fund attached to a stable insurance company, took “prudent” and “appropriate” decisions but was undermined, in part, by an intervention from external auditors.
However, one of his superiors, AIG’s former chief risk officer Robert Lewis, will offer a bleaker picture to the commission, admitting that AIG was “wrong about how bad things could get”.