NEW YORK (Reuters) - American International Group Inc got a new slate of government-backed directors at a subdued annual meeting yesterday, effectively revamping its board after the insurer's $180 billion taxpayer bailout.

The meeting attracted far fewer investors than in years past and wrapped up in less than an hour, with the outcome of company proposals all but assured by the fact that trustees appointed to oversee the government's nearly 80 percent stake in AIG can swing any vote.

Only a handful of investors used the meeting as a forum to air grievances, even though it was the first public opportunity to address AIG management and directors since the company's implosion last September.

Less than 200 investors attended the meeting, held in AIG's soon to be sold 72 Wall Street building, which was circled by security personnel. This was in sharp contrast to overflow crowds in years past. Shareholders have seen the value of their stock all but wiped out. The shares, which traded as high as $100 at the beginning of the decade, have languished below $2 nearly all year.

"I am sorry for what's happened to you," chief executive Edward Liddy told a shareholder who said she and her husband had bought AIG shares in their retirement plan and had lost a lot of money. "The story that you recount has happened to so many folks," Liddy said.

AIG delayed its annual meeting, usually held in May, to give it more time to shuffle its board, which has been almost entirely reconstituted over the last year.

"They were like rats leaving a sinking ship — goodbye and good riddance," shareholder Kenneth Steiner of Great Neck, New York, said at the meeting, referring to departed directors.

At least seven of the new directors were recommended by either the US Treasury Department or the trustees overseeing the government's stake in AIG.