The Spitzer Effect

We don't have to wait for the outcome of the battle between American International Group (AIG) and its regulators to predict that it will affect how public companies can be governed in a world in which prosecutors are unconstrained by rules designed to protect the rights of the accused.

Maurice "Hank" Greenberg built AIG from a small insurance operation into a $100 billion powerhouse, taking him to the pinnacle of America's financial and philanthropic establishments and becoming one of the "high flying, adored," to borrow from Tim Rice's Evita lyrics. From which perch he has fallen, and is now an unemployed executive scrambling to transfer over $2 billion in assets to his wife to shield them from prosecutors and private litigants.

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