American International Group Inc., the insurer that vowed to temper spending after hosting a conference at a California resort amid a federal bailout, plans to sponsor a similar event at a $400-a-night hotel.

Next week's conference is to be held at the Ritz-Carlton in California's Half Moon Bay, said spokesman Nicholas Ashooh. The White House, Congress and Barack Obama castigated AIG this week for spending $440,000 last month at the St. Regis resort in Monarch Beach.

"Whether the company's behavior is wrong on an absolute basis doesn't really matter right now," said Heather Elms, a business professor at the Kogod School of Business at American University in Washington. "It's become a question of perception, and it seems that they're being viewed as behaving unethically."

AIG, which got an $85 billion loan from the U.S. government last month, borrowed another $37.8 billion from the Federal Reserve yesterday to "replenish liquidity," the Fed said. Chief Executive Officer Edward Liddy told Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson yesterday that the company will rethink expenses.

"We understand that our company is now facing very different challenges," Liddy wrote in a letter to Paulson. "We owe our employees and the American public new standards and approaches."

Next week's event aims to "motivate and educate" about 150 independent agents who sell AIG coverage to high-end clients, said spokesman Nicholas Ashooh.

'Bad idea'

AIG considered buying advertisements to explain its position, only to be told by its public-relations consultant, George Sard, that it would be "a really bad idea."

"To spend the taxpayer's money on an expensive ad campaign to apologize for how you used taxpayer money leaves you open to further attacks," Sard wrote in an e-mail to Ashooh. Sard, chief executive officer of New York-based Sard Verbinnen & Co., said the message was a private e-mail mistakenly sent to Bloomberg and wasn't intended to be a public statement.

"Anyone who knows the financial industry knows there is excess, even in normal times," said Bruce Kogut, an ethics professor at Columbia Business School in New York. "These are not normal times."

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino called "despicable" expenses from the first gathering, a weeklong conference at the St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach that began days after the U.S. agreed to give AIG the $85 billion. Those costs included $23,000 for spa services, according to Representative Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

AIG should repay

Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, said during last night's debate with Republican candidate John McCain that AIG should repay the U.S. Treasury for the costs of the event.

"The Treasury should demand that money back and those executives should be fired," Obama said.

In his letter to Paulson, Liddy said the St. Regis gathering was planned "many months" before the Fed's initial loan to AIG. Next week's meeting was also planned before the loan, Ashooh said.

"This sort of gathering has been standard practice in our industry for many years," Liddy wrote. "Let me assure you that we are reevaluating the costs of all aspects of our operations in light of the new circumstances in which we are all operating."

About 50 AIG employees will also attend the Half Moon Bay meeting. Ashooh said he didn't know the cost of the event or how long it would last. Next week's meeting has more of an educational component than the St. Regis event, he said.

Receipts provided by Waxman for the earlier conference at the St. Regis were dated Sept. 22 through Sept. 30. AIG agreed to the $85 billion loan from the government on Sept. 16, ceding a 79.9 percent ownership interest to the U.S. government.