AIG Unit's Party, Luxury Resort Conference Upsets Watchdogs

Executives from an AIG American General attended a conference at the St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort in Southern California the Orange County Register reported.

On off-site dinner the Friday before last at Mission San Juan Capistrano featured tables "draped with soft Tuscan-gold tablecloths," elegant flower centerpieces for tables and what appeared to be fine Crystal stemware, according to a report by the Orange County register.

"The inappropriateness and the excessiveness just blew us away," a member of activist group Outraged Taxpayer who visited the Mission on Friday to pray in the chapel, told the Register. "It's outrageous. In very poor taste. Over the top."

AIG spokesman Joseph Norton tells the Register that the conference included recognition of "vital independent agents" who distribute the company's products. He added that the subsidiary is in much better financial condition than the parent company.

"It's one of our viable businesses," he said. "They're fully capitalized. They're fine. It wasn't a corporate kind of thing."