Legal News

Kozlowski: Hard to Reconcile AIG Bailout With $6,000 Shower Curtain

By Dan Slater

FOX Business Network’s Liz Claman recently sat down with former TYCO CEO Dennis Kozlowski, who was convicted in 2005 on fraud changes and later sentenced to at least eight years, four months in prison. He’s currently serving his time at the Mid-State Correctional Facility in upstate New York. At 4pm today, the interview will be presented on the network’s Bulls & Bears segment. In the meantime, here’s a teaser:

On a bailout versus a shower curtain:

I sit here and I read about a $150 billion bailout of AIG, I compare it to a $6,000 shower curtain. It’s hard to reconcile the two.

On AIG spa vacations (which went primarily to AIG top salespeople to reward performance for selling life insurance policies):

That surprises me. That’s very surprising. If that is true, if that really happened, that’s criminal. That’s really bad.

On how the government bailout is hurting him:

The way things are going for CEOs right now, with all the bailouts going on, that’s of no help to me whatsoever. . . . If we were back to boom times and stock markets were going great and people were making money and the world’s 401(k)s weren’t down 30 or 40%, I do think that I would have had a better shot at the appeal. I do feel that. [Last month, New York’s highest court rejected Kozlowski’s arguments that their trials were flawed.]

On his role in history compared to today’s financial crisis:

Why am I sitting here? Tyco is still a viable company, still alive and kicking. Bear Sterns is under, Lehman Brothers is under. Merrill Lynch had to be acquired. There are all kinds of banks going under right now.

I would think that the financial world would say, ‘Please bring back the $6,000 shower curtain.’ You know, that seems like nothing in the middle of everything that’s going on right now.

Murderers that I’ve met, rapists, there are certainly people that have far less of a sentence than I have, yes.

Law Blog Readers, is Kozlowski right? Are you longing for those oh-so-innocent ‘$6,000 shower curtain’ times?

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on November 13, 2008 (boomark / email).