American International Group’s CEO Robert Benmosche has told employees he wants to halve fees paid to Wall Street banks to take the insurer’s units public. AIG, which is selling businesses and planning initial public offerings to repay U.S. bailout loans, has been getting advice from banks including Morgan Stanley, Blackstone Group, Goldman Sachs Group. and JPMorgan Chase. “I went into one presentation, and they said, ‘Well, the investment banking deal will be in the range of 2 percent and 2.5 percent,” Benmosche said when asked about fees in an Aug. 11 staff meeting, according to a record obtained by Bloomberg. “I said, ‘How about 1 percent?’ So then everybody’s face turned red, and I said, ‘So change it.’ So we’re talking about 1 percent, not 2 percent to 2.5 percent.” Benmosche also wants to rein in the fees charged by attorneys and consultants. “I am busy getting lists of bankers, lists of lawyers, how many consultants we have,” Benmosche told employees at the meeting in Houston. “We forget to look in our own backyard for skills,” because managers feel “we need the consultants,” he said. “I think we have too many.” Benmosche told U.S. life insurance employees in the meeting that he would examine all units to see which should be kept and would “come out with a vision” in September. He made the remarks on his second day on the job, after being named earlier in August as AIG’s fifth CEO since 2005. Benmosche has said he wants to rebuild units rather then sell them at unfavorable prices, and last month he pulled the auction of an investment-advisory business. He told employees that divestitures of non-U.S. life units may be unavoidable.