About the Book

In 1919, AIG’s founder, Cornelius Vander Starr, moved to Shanghai and started the insurance agency that, by the end of that century, would become AIG, the global insurance empire.

Over the next fifty years, Starr spread his empire around the world. In 1968, following a succession struggle, Starr chose Hank Greenberg, a son of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, as his successor. Greenberg took the company public and continued to build AIG through the end of the 20th Century until he and it attained power and status virtually unrivaled in the global business community.

But early in the 21st century, issues of governance and corporate malfeasance began to dominate the world business stage, exacerbated by the collapse of Enron and problems in other major firms. This ushered in a new era of regulation, government oversight, and prosecutorial action.

On March 14, 2005, Hank Greenberg fell from his seemingly unassailable aerie of leadership in business and saw his powerful influence and leadership in politics and the charitable world diminished as the result of an investigation conducted by New York State Attorney General Elliott Spitzer.

Would Greenberg, one of the most successful and influential CEOs ever, nearly 80 years old and already a billionaire several times over, really risk his reputation, his position, and, potentially, even his freedom, over a relatively trivial accounting scheme? Why did Eliot Spitzer go after Greenberg with such incredible zeal—and then never charge him with a crime?

Ron Shelp, the book’s author, draws from his years as an executive at AIG and interviews with current and former AIG employees and business and government leaders to paint a remarkable portrait of Hank Greenberg and create a mesmerizing account of the world’s largest insurance company.

Click here to read an excerpt from Fallen Giant.