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Recent Press Releases (U.S. and international) for magazine issues and staff changes may be found below. Please note that for many issues there exists only a highlights sheet, while for others there may also be a full press release. The cover of FORTUNE's current issue is pictured at right. Please contact the appropriate communications staff member with any questions.
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FORTUNE TAKES BEHIND-THE-SCENES LOOK AT FALL OF AIG'S HANK GREENBERG "All I Want In Life Is An Unfair Advantage," said CEO. New York, July 25, 2005—In an exclusive investigation, FORTUNE looks behind-the-scenes at the fall of Hank Greenberg, former CEO of AIG and arguably, according to New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer, "the most powerful businessman in the world." FORTUNE's four-month search to understand Greenberg's remarkable career at AIG, and the events that brought it to an end, reveals a long record of self-inflicted wounds that dates back more than a decade. The story, "Inside Hank Greenberg's Big Fall," by Peter Elkind and Devin Leonard, appears in the August 8 issue of FORTUNE, available on newsstands August 1 and at www.fortune.com on Monday, July 25. "Most corporate scandals are born of desperation and greed," say Elkind and Leonard. "Not this one. AIG is no Enron. Greenberg wasn't playing tricks with the numbers to keep his company afloat; even after a big restatement, AIG remains a thriving, profitable company." The games Greenberg is accused of playing were intended to address mundane problems: a short-term stock decline, the failure of a new business venture, an analyst's criticism that AIG was under-reserved for potential loss—everyday headaches that CEO's must learn to live with. Most of these schemes—a "pandora's box," according to Spitzer—had Greenberg's fingerprints on them. "AIG divulged that it had done billions of dollars in business with companies in Barbados and Bermuda that it secretly controlled," say Elkind and Leonard. "The company admitted beautifying its income statement by playing games on its derivatives trading desk and vastly understating its loss reserves. Most conspicuously, AIG unwound an elaborate scheme that Greenberg personally initiated with General Re, a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary, to increase AIG's reserves through an allegedly fraudulent "nontraditional" insurance deal." Why would such an iconic corporate figure engage in so many deceptions that ultimately made little difference to his company's rise? The answer, says FORTUNE, seems to be that Greenberg poured his entire being into AIG, pursuing perfection until it cost him everything. At the end of the day, says one analyst, "He got trapped in his own little world." Or as a former AIG general counsel put it, Hank Greenberg built a company accountable to no one—not lawyers, not regulators, not auditors, not even directors. No one, that is, but himself. # # # For further information please contact:
Amy Mahfouz
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