the 400 wealthiest Americans. He is also one of the top six executives in the American International Group, which Forbes says is the eighth largest company in America with assets of $70 billion.

And yet, at 75 years old, Fairylands resident Mr. Ernest Stempel continues to spend the majority of his time at work. Last year he flew around the world twice and says he knows countries in the Far East better than many parts of the United States.

He commutes to his New York office every week, and although he attempted to retire ten years ago, he still runs AIG's life insurance division, which has more than 10,000 employees and 75,000 agents in more than 100 countries worldwide.

"I've had a very interesting life,'' he says, putting down much of his success to being in the right place at the right time. "I also worked very hard.'' Indeed, Mr. Stempel is responsible for an operation that is possibly larger than all of the companies in Bermuda added together. The life insurance division in 1991 reported revenues of $6.5 billion, and profits of more than $500 million.

About his own personal wealth, he quietly says much of it is tied up in stocks. "When I stared with American International, I bought a lot of shares,'' he says. "In those days, they were worth about 25 cents.'' Today AIG stock trades at more than $98 per share.

Mr. Stempel joined the company as an underwriter in 1938, when he worked in the small New York office. "I had turned down a scholarship to law school because I wanted to have a career in journalism,'' he says. But after a few weeks on the job, he decided against journalism and had to find a job to put himself through law school.

While working during the day and studying at night, Mr. Stempel managed to earn three law degrees -- the first one from Fordham University Law School in New York, plus a masters of law and a doctor of jurisprudence degree from New York School of Law.

He left the company in the 1940s when he served in the US Navy during the Second World War. It was during his first leave from the Navy that he married his first wife. They had one son before the marriage ended. He remarried in 1954 and has two sons and a daughter. He lives with his wife in Pembroke.

After the end of the war, Mr. Stempel returned to a much larger and stronger American International.

In 1953, six years after the company opened its head office in Hamilton, Mr.

Stempel came to Bermuda to run the non-life operations of the company, which was then called American International Reinsurance Company, Inc. (AIRCo).

The company, the very first international insurance company to set up operations in Bermuda, had its offices on the corner of Woodbourne Avenue and Pitts Bay Road, and Mr. Stempel remembers: "If you weren't a tourist, then everyone just figured you worked for American International. There was nothing else.

"Back then, I could never have dreamed the company would be so successful.'' At that time, the company had virtually no operations in the US, aside from a very small office in New York. Bermuda was chosen out of two other possible jurisdictions because of its good communications and support services, English legal system, English-speaking population, and stable Government.

During the 1960s, the company had grown significantly enough to warrant having its own building, which finally opened in 1971 on Richmond Road. Mr. Stempel remembers that at one point, the Bermuda offices employed as many as 345 people.

But by 1978, the US office was far larger that its parent in Bermuda, and the company announced a reverse merger and moved the parent company to New York, calling it American International Group, Inc. Employees were offered positions in the US offices, but many opted to leave the company for other insurance operations that had by then set up in Bermuda.

"The industry in Bermuda now is populated with people who started out with us,'' he says.

He said American International had been built into the company it is today through "a lot of hard work''. He said the company, unlike so many others which invested in bad mortgages, bad real estate, and junk bonds, had been very careful and conservative about investment.

In addition, 50 percent of AIG's annual income comes from outside the US. Mr.

Stempel said the company had tremendous diversification, adding that the greatest opportunities now exist in the Far East. And AIG is very excited about future prospects in Latin America, especially Chile, Argentina, and possibly Venezuela, he said.

He said it was that diversification that had helped significantly when the US insurance industry was in a downturn.

"We have always been very conservative underwriters,'' Mr. Stempel said.

"That we are able to make a profit during the present conditions shows the strength of the company.

Much of that strength also lies in the fact that approximately 30 percent of AIG is owned within the company. "We are very fortunate that that amount is controlled in-house,'' he said. "Our philosophy has always been that we should be the owners and managers of our business. You can't get good people to work very hard for you, unless you make them owners.'' Today Mr. Stempel spend about nine months out of the year travelling, primarily in the Far East, but also in Europe, and South America. What little time he saves for recreation is spent on the tennis court, or in his sailboat.

"I'd be bored stiff sitting around all day playing golf -- that's all right for some people,'' he says.

In his nearly 40 years in Bermuda, Mr. Stempel has contributed much to the Island. He, together with the late Mr. Andre Boyd of Merck, Sharp, and Dohme were responsible for activating the International Companies Division of the Chamber of Commerce.

He has contributed more than $1.5 million to education, the Bermuda Biological Station, King Edward VII Memorial Hospital, and other organisations on behalf of American International Co. Ltd. and the Starr Foundation, which was set up in the 1960s after the death of American International's founder Mr. C.V.

Starr.

In addition, Mr. Stempel was last year awarded the Philippine American Foundation's Friendship Award, for his and AIG's contributions to the Philippines. The award is given annually to "outstanding Americans who have contributed greatly to the promotion of friendly relations and mutual understanding between the Philippines and the United States, either as policy makers or as philanthropists''.

Mr. Ernest Stempel.