Unstructured Finance

Scanning Goldman Sachs’s newly published interactive annual report on Monday, Unstructured Finance had to do a double-take upon seeing American International Group highlighted as a client success story.

Yes, that’s right. AIG.

Goldman’s site features a 3-minute, 47-second video with two investment bankers, Devanshu Dhyani and Andrea Vittorelli, talking about their work on various AIG deals to help repay the U.S. government.

It also has photos of bankers around the globe who were involved with AIG stock sales, stock buybacks and assets sales, including Chris Cole, co-chairman of investment banking; Yan Liu, Ed Byun Dan Dees and Phyllis Luk, bankers based in Hong Kong; and Michael Tesser and Terence Lim, bankers based in New York.

“The most important aspect of success here was the full repayment of the U.S. government – $182 billion of funds committed to stabilizing AIG at the height of the financial crisis – not only repaid back in a matter of years but repaid back at a profit of $23 billion to the US taxpayer,” says Dhyani. “I think that’s a tremendous achievement for AIG, for people who are involved in this process.”

Jim Millstein, a former Lazard banker who oversaw the government’s stake in AIG at the U.S. Treasury Department until 2011, also contributed a quote to the site.

By Jennifer Ablan and Matthew Goldstein

Goldman Sachs’s chief executive Lloyd Blankfein and his likely successor, Gary Cohn, issued a formal response today following a scathing op-ed in the New York Times from Greg Smith, who announced his resignation from the investment firm.

Smith, a banker who worked in Goldman’s equity derivatives group, asserted that several Goldman managing directors had referred to their own clients as “muppets.” In Britain, where Smith is based, “muppet” is used as a derogatory term to describe someone who is regarded as being ignorant.

You can read his list of complaints below.

For their part, Blankfein and Cohn wrote: “We were disappointed to read the assertions made by this individual that do not reflect our values, our culture and how the vast majority of people at Goldman Sachs think about the firm and the work it does on behalf of our clients.”