As reflected in their agreement filed on August 26, 2010, the parties to the New York and Delaware derivative actions involving former AIG CEO Maurice Greenberg, as well as certain other former AIG directors and officers, have agreed to settle the case for a payment to AIG by its D&O insurers of $90 million. The agreement also provides that the insurers will pay $60 million to Greenberg and Howard Smith, AIG’s former Chief Financial Officer, for their legal fees.

 

The settlement is subject to the approval of Delaware Chancery Court Vice Chancellor Leo Strine. Jef Feeley and Hugh Son’s August 27, 2010 Bloomberg article about the settlement can be found here.

 

This derivative lawsuit settlement follows AIG’s $725 settlement of a related securities class action lawsuit, and also follows the $115 million settlement in 2008 of a separate shareholders derivative lawsuit involving directors and officers of AIG.

 

Background

In 2004, the first of many separate shareholders derivative lawsuits (later consolidated) were filed in New York and in Delaware, against AIG as nominal defendant, and against numerous former AIG directors and officers, including Greenberg and Smith. The investors alleged that AIG insiders to misstated AIG’s financial performance in order to deceive investors about AIG’s financial condition.

 

The centerpiece of the lawsuit was an allegedly fraudulent $500 million reinsurance transaction in which various AIG insiders staged an elaborate artificial transaction with Gen Re Corporation. The complaint also alleged AIG insiders allegedly used secret offshore subsidiaries to mask AIG losses, misstated accounts with no basis for their adjustments, failed to correct well-documented accounting problems in an AIG subsidiary, and hid AIG’s involvement in controversial insurance policies that involved betting on when elderly people would die. The complaint also related to alleged bid-rigging allegations and alleged sale of illegal financial products.

 

In a lengthy February 2009 opinion, Delaware Vice Chancellor Leo Strine denied the motions to dismiss of Greenberg, Smith and certain other senior former AIG officials, although he granted the motion as to certain other individuals. Strine observed, among other things, "The Complaint fairly supports the assertion that AIG’s Inner Circle led a — and I use this term with knowledge of its strength — criminal organization. The diversity, pervasiveness, and materiality of the alleged financial wrongdoing at AIG is extraordinary."

 

Following further procedural wrangling and developments, the parties participated in a series of mediations involving retired Judge Layn Phillips, which resulted among other things in this settlement agreement.

 

The Settlement

The August 26 agreement seems to resolve all of the litigation involving all of the parties. However, the agreement is also not self-sufficient, as it is "conditioned upon execution of and compliance with a written settlement agreement under which the D&O carriers" pay the agreed upon amounts. I have not been able to obtain a copy of the separate insurance agreement and indeed the wording of the August 26 agreement suggests that at least at the time the August 26 agreement was drafted, the implied insurance agreement had not yet been drafted or fully executed.

 

The August 26 agreement does recite that the applicable insurance consists of AIG’s 2004-2005 D&O insurance tower, which has aggregate limits of liability of $200 million. The agreement does not identify the insurers in the tower or their respective limits of liability. The agreement also recites that the parties to the August 26 agreement have claims pending against the insurance tower in excess of its $200 million limit.

 

The agreement also states that the insurers "dispute that the D&O Insurance Tower is available to pay the claims made under the policies," but that the parties "desire to resolve their disputes regarding the appropriate allocation of their respective rights to the D&O Insurance Tower."

 

The agreement also incorporates certain understandings as the plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fees. Among other things, the agreement provides that the Delaware plaintiffs’ attorneys shall seek and the other parties shall not oppose attorneys’ fees of no more than 22.5% of the Settlement Amount (i.e. no more than $20.25 million) and no more than $1 million in expenses. The New York plaintiffs’ attorneys will seek a fee of no more than $2.5 million. If the two sets of attorneys were to realize the full amount of these fee awards and expenses, the net recovery to AIG from the settlement would be $66.25 million.

 

Discussion

There are a number of interesting things about this settlement. First, the cash payments specified in the agreement are to be funded exclusively with the proceeds of the D&O Insurance Tower.

 

Indeed, the Bloomberg article linked above quotes Greenberg’s attorney as saying that all of litigation by or on behalf of AIG again Greenberg "was settled with Mr. Greenberg paying nothing and other parties paying money to Mr. Greenberg." (This statement is probably worthy of an entire blog post some day all on its own.). Victor Li’s August 27, 2010 Am Law Litigation Daily article (here) about the settlement quotes the Delaware litigation lead plaintiffs’ attorney as saying that as a result of the settlement, $90 million is going to AIG that otherwise would have gone to Greenberg and other defendants based on a 2009 settlement between AIG, Greenberg and Smith, under which AIG agreed to reimburse up to $150 million of their legal fees.

 

While others can debate who gave or got what in this settlement, the bottom line is that the money for this settlement is coming entirely from insurance.

 

Without details about the separate insurance settlement referenced in the August 26 agreement, it is hard to know for sure, but it seems as if the $150 million of insurance funds exhausts the remaining funds under the D&O Insurance Tower, either by actual payment of loss or by compromise. (There obviously is some linkage between the $150 million total of payments in the August 26 agreement and the November 2009 agreement between AIG and Greenberg, but the precise connection isn’t apparent from the face of the documents I have seen so far.)

 

In addition to the fact that the August 26 agreement recites that the parties claims on the D&O Insurance Tower exceed the Tower’s $200 million aggregate limits of liability, another reason I assume that the Tower is actually or effectively exhausted is the interpleader action the primary insurer in this Tower filed against Greenberg and AIG, in order to avoid or resolve an arbitration dispute about priority rights to the proceeds of the $15 million primary policy. By interpleading the $15 million limits of liability, the primary insurer was effectively disclaiming any rights to those funds, indicating that those amounts at least consumed by claims costs. The next layers up above the primary insurance undoubtedly were also substantially eroded if not consumed by claims costs as well.

 

My final observation about the $90 settlement on behalf of Greenberg with AIG is that this represents yet another jumbo settlement of a shareholders’ derivative suit. There was a time when a derivative lawsuit settlement involving substantial cash payments was very unusual, but in recent years substantial payment of cash in connection with the settlement of derivative lawsuits has become increasingly common.

 

In addition to the $115 million settlement of the prior AIG derivative suit, other large recent derivative lawsuit settlements include the $118 million Broadcom options backdating related derivative settlement, the $122 million Oracle settlement and the $225 million Comverse Technology options backdating related derivative lawsuit settlement. It is particularly noteworthy that all of these payments are outside the insolvency context.

 

One consequence of this outbreak of jumbo settlements in derivative lawsuits is that the possibility that Excess Side A insurance might be called upon to pay loss – even outside of the insolvency context — seems to be increasing. Certainly these massive settlements provide increasing evidence for the value to insureds of these kinds of insurance structures, whether or not the recent AIG settlement did or did not actually involve contributions from Excess Side A insurers. The increasing numbers of derivative settlements involving large cash payments certainly underscores that the Excess Side A insurers are exposed to potential losses — even outside of the insolvency context — an exposure that actually seems to be increasing over time.

 

Special thanks to Jef Feeley for providing a copy of the August 26 agreement.