NEW YORK_Former American International Group Inc. CEO Maurice "Hank" Greenberg returned to the witness stand on Wednesday to defend taking over a retirement bonus fund that AIG is trying to recover in federal court.

AIG's lawyer Theodore Wells played a video of Greenberg in 2000 telling retirement plan participants that there were "sufficient shares in the trust for a couple hundred of years."

"It's a motivating speech," Greenberg told jurors. He said the participants in attendance would have known that "a couple hundred years is an exaggeration, obviously."

"No company can plan 200 years in advance," he said. "You're lucky if you can plan five years in advance."

Greenberg has appeared mostly solemn and composed during Wells' examination, but he raised his voice when Wells pressed the issue again: "It was a figure of speech," Greenberg said, leaning forward in his chair.

Insurance giant AIG has accused Greenberg, through his private firm Starr International, of raiding an AIG retirement program composed of $4.3 billion in stock after he was ousted from the CEO position in March 2005.

Greenberg, 84, built AIG over nearly four decades from a small insurer into the world's largest, and was then kicked out as CEO amid investigations of accounting irregularities. Starr, however, remained AIG's largest shareholder until the government bailed out AIG last year.

AIG has received $182 billion in federal aid. AIG says if it can reclaim the $4.3 billion from Starr, the money would help the troubled financial services company repay the government.

The complicated lawsuit against Greenberg and Starr involves a fund created during a reorganization of AIG in 1970 with $110 million worth of stock. Its value grew to $4.3 billion over nearly four decades.


AIG's lawyers are arguing that Greenberg took control of the fund and then sold tens of millions of the AIG shares held in it because he was angry about losing his job. Starr's lawyers are arguing that the shares rightfully belonged to Starr.

In July 2005, Starr's voting shareholders, including Greenberg, decided to restate the purpose of the fund. In a memo Wells presented in court on Wednesday, Starr's shareholders said they rescinded previously stated purposes of the fund, and reaffirmed the fund's "ultimate purpose" as a charitable trust.

Wells asked Greenberg on Wednesday if he informed the hundreds of retirement plan participants of the fund's restated purpose.

"I don't think we had an obligation to tell them that," Greenberg said.

The fund had been described in letters and speeches by Greenberg before 2005 as a retirement bonus fund for select current and future employees _ a "kind of golden handcuffs" given to members of "the inner club." In one speech, he called the fund's creation "the most unselfish act in corporate history."

The plan was so uniquely structured that Greenberg said in a 2000 speech, shown in the video in court: "If we tried to do it today, it would be impossible because of the tax laws."

Starr International Co., also known as SICO, is a Bermuda-based holding company.

Greenberg has been arguing since Tuesday that his descriptions of the plan to participants were loose, not legalistic, and that plans can change.

The fund was "a plan. A plan is not cast in concrete. There had to be certain performance standards," Greenberg said on Tuesday. If those standards were not met, Starr's voting shareholders "had a right to make a change," he said.

He also said the fund was "not just for AIG employees," and that it had many other purposes. One was to allow Starr to control AIG, Greenberg said, and after Greenberg lost his job, Starr's voting shareholders "lost control" of AIG, and were then able to reclaim the shares.