Hank Greenberg

The Wall Street Journal reports that many of the big names usually associated with the tops of donor lists and newly dedicated museum wings are cutting back on their charitable donations this year--including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, David Koch of manufacturing giant Koch Industries, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, and former AIG head Maurice "Hank" Greenberg.

According to the piece, the downturn has come at a particularly bad time for the charity circuit, which depends on large infusions of holiday season cash to get through the year. Surprisingly, it seems that rates of giving are usually resistant to economic strain. But this year is going to be different, and it's not really a matter of choice on behalf of the donors: Collapsed banks Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch were all known to have given generously (not to mention decimated mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac).  read more »

Artist Geoffrey Raymond did not have much luck soliciting signatures on his portrait of ousted AIG Chairman Hank Greenberg when he displayed it outside the firm's Wall Street headquarters last week.

When Mr. Raymond first unfurled "The Annotated Spitzer" outside of the New York Stock Exchange 15 minutes after the governor resigned on March 12, over 100 passersby reveled in the schadenfreude, scrawling messages like "Spitzer or Swallow" around the head of Wall Street's disgraced nemesis. Mr. Raymond went on to collect 350 comments on the Spitzer portrait, less than a dozen of which were encouraging, setting the still-unsurpassed record in his nine-piece "Annotated" series.  read more »

What’s odd about state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s alleged threat to former Goldman Sachs Co-Chairman John Whitehead (“You will pay dearly for what you have done”) is how it ever came into the public eye. Whitehead wrote an op-ed in April denouncing Spitzer’s public prosecution of A.I.G. chief Hank Greenberg. Then the alleged threatening phone conversation took place. Eight months later, after Spitzer conceded his case against Greenberg was too weak to warrant criminal charges, and once rival Democrat Tom Suozzi emerged as Wall Street’s candidate of choice in next year’s gubernatorial election, Whitehead tells all. The justification of going public, Whitehead writes, is that “there have been rumors in the media as to what happened next.”

These “rumors” appear to be a single question in a December 19 interview on CNBC’s “Closing Bell” in which Maria Bartiromo asked Greenberg to confirm rumors whether Spitzer called Whitehead to say that “basically, he was upset that he wrote the op-ed supporting you.” Greenberg said he had heard that also but wouldn’t elaborate.

But the Money Honey’s question was just as tame as earlier renditions of the phone call—so why did Whitehead speak now? The New York Times mentioned in a May 6 report that the Attorney General and Whitehead had a “frank discussion” after the column ran. And in an August 8 column in The New York Sun, Brian McGuire wrote that Spitzer “is said to have responded hotly." Spitzer’s spokesman was quoted as saying that his boss called Whitehead merely to ask where he had gotten his information.

Whitehead is now the chairman of both the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation. The largest grant to the foundation announced so far--$25 million--came from the Starr Foundation, which Greenberg controls.  read more »

We have a call in to Whitehead's office in case he can elaborate. Meanwhile, The New York Post reports that Republicans have joined the pile-on against Spitzer.

-Matthew Schuerman

The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation announced today that it had surpassed the $100 million mark—the first indication of how much progress it has made towards its $500 million private fundraising goal. Biggest single donor ($25 million): AIG’s Starr Foundation, which is still chaired by Hank Greenberg even though he no longer runs the insurance company. Also, Deutsche Bank ($15 million) and Bank of New York ($10 million) pitched in, but no word yet from American Express or any of the other corporations that are looking down into that bathtub, waiting for it to be filled. -Matthew Schuerman  read more »

Et tu, Frank?Until this spring, Maurice (Hank) Greenberg was chairman and chief executive of America  read more »

Lasse Hallstrom's The Cider House Rules , from John Irving's screenplay and based on his novel, repr  read more »

He liked small talk. He hated signing autographs.  read more »