A New York Democratic Party Senator has said that US "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg should be given legislative powers to recover bonuses paid to AIG executives past and present. Speaking on Bloomberg Television, Senator Charles Schumer said that the AIG executives "were supposed to return them. They said they would return them. Now many of them are not with the company". Neil Barofsky, the special inspector-general for the US government bailouts, has said that, of $45m in bonus payments which executives had pledged to pay back — an offer made after New York Attorney-General Andrew Cuomo had threatened to release the AIG executives' names to the public — only $19m had actually been returned. In October Mr Feinberg wrote to AIG chief executive Robert Benmosche, noting that four of the top five executives at AIG Financial Products had promised to repay bonuses received early in 2009, but that not one of them had done so.

New York-based AIG is to use stock units that mirror the value of AIG's common stock for 2009 stock salary grants to its executives, the company said in a regulatory news filing last week. The New York Times reported that Treasury pay czar Kenneth Feinberg had met resistance from some AIG executives last year, who had asked via then general counsel Anastasia Kelly to be paid bonuses in cash rather than stock, because AIG shares were seen by them as valueless. The NYT claimed that AIG executives, including CFO David Herzog, had insisted on keeping cash retention bonuses, despite Mr Feinberg's attempt to impose so-called salarized stock agreements.

US insurer AIG has confirmed that general counsel Anastasia Kelly has resigned from the company. Ms Kelly cited "good reason" under the terms of her contract and the compulsory reduction in her salary, which had been enforced because AIG had received TARP funds. Suzanne Folsom, deputy general counsel and chief compliance & regulatory officer, also resigned. CEO Robert Benmosche said that AIG was "exceedingly grateful" for the work done by Ms Kelly, "often during very difficult times". Bloomberg, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, said that Ms Kelly would collect about $3.8m in severance pay, while Ms Folsom would be entitled to more than $1m. AIG's spokeswoman Christina Pretto declined to comment on the matter. If Ms Kelly is obtaining the maximum of two years' severance pay because of her "good reason" termination, then the salary cap of $500,000 would have cut her pay by nearly 75% She joined AIG in 2006 to help the company already in the middle of a regulatory crisis that had led to the ousting of Maurice "Hank" Greenberg after an investigation by then New York Attorney-General Eliot Spitzer.

Justin Gardener, formerly a non-executive director at failed Australian insurer HIH, has won his appeal against a 2006 ruling barring him from any senior role in the insurance industry. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal said today that Mr Gardiner should be treated as if he had never been disqualified. The Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority (APRA) ruled in June 2006 that Mr Gardener be barred from serving in a senior role at any insurance firm. He had been a non-executive director at HIH from December 1998 to March 2001. He had also been chairman of the audit committee for part of that time. The Tribunal's decision is the second blow for APRA, which in August this year saw overturned its ban on former HIH non-executive director Robert Stitt.