(Bloomberg) ? American International Group Inc. investors have rewarded chief executive officer Martin Sullivan, bidding up AIG shares as he cooperated with regulators investigating his predecessor. Now, they want him to emulate the ousted CEO, Maurice ?Hank? Greenberg.

That means more new products, a stronger foothold in China and further earnings growth of 15 percent a year, say shareholders in the world?s largest insurer.

In his 11 months at the helm, Sullivan, 51 and a former Greenberg protege, has used his crisis-management skills to navigate New York-based AIG through a $3.9 billion earnings restatement and resolve New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer?s accusations that the insurer used sham reinsurance contracts to distort its finances. With those concerns removed, his challenge is to prove his mettle as an insurance CEO.

?Sullivan took a company that was really scandal-ridden, and he has opened it up,? says David Dreman, who manages $15 billion at Dreman Value Management in Jersey City, New Jersey, including 4.27 million AIG shares as of December 31. ?On the other hand, will he pull off all sorts of new major products like Greenberg did? It?s really hard to say.?

Sullivan?s willingness to settle the accounting inquiry helped AIG recoup $43.9 billion of $59 billion in market value lost after Greenberg came under scrutiny a year earlier. AIG agreed this month to pay $1.64 billion to resolve claims of improper accounting and sales practices. AIG shares rose 34 percent to $67.26 on February 21 from the Sullivan-era low of $50.35 on April 22.

Greenberg himself says the jury is still out on Sullivan.

?The outside lawyers and the outside directors are really managing the company, from what I can tell,? Greenberg, 80, said in an interview with Bloomberg News.

?Time will tell whether he has what it takes to head AIG or not.?

Sullivan, who started with AIG as a teenage file clerk in his native UK in 1971, described the task of replacing Greenberg as ?daunting? when the former CEO was removed in March. Groomed by AIG founder Cornelius Vander Starr, Greenberg was the top executive for 38 years, making AIG among the ten most valuable companies on the Standard & Poor?s 500 Index and becoming the industry?s public face in Washington and abroad.

Under Greenberg, AIG posted an average 15 percent annual increase in operating earnings, which exclude investment gains and losses, from 2000 to 2004. Investors are likely to measure Sullivan against that rate regardless of the restatement, says Paul Newsome, an analyst at A.G. Edwards & Sons Inc. in St. Louis.

AIG will produce 14 percent annual operating earnings growth for the next two years, in line with property and casualty competitors and higher than an estimated 10 percent growth rate for other life insurers, William Wilt, an analyst with Morgan Stanley in New York, predicted last month.

?He?s going to have to put up the numbers,? says Robert Rhodes, who helps manage $2.7 billion at SunTrust Banks Inc.?s Atlanta-based Trusco Capital Management, including about 400,000 AIG shares.

?Every reporting period is going to be another report card.?

Greenberg more than doubled AIG?s sales of property and casualty policies in his last five years on the job.

In 2004, AIG created liability coverage for managers of buyout firms and a policy protecting makers of anti-terror technology from lawsuits following an attack.

Greenberg became AIG?s CEO in 1967 and took AIG public in 1969. Greenberg?s total compensation for 2004, his last full year at AIG, was $29 million, more than Sullivan?s $16 million in 2005.

Greenberg is AIG?s biggest individual stockholder, with 43.1 million shares, a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission shows. AIG shares held by Greenberg, family trusts and foundations, C.V. Starr and another company he controls, Starr International Co., had a combined value of $27 billion as of February 21.

Sullivan became an underSullivan became an underwriter of property insurance, rising through the ranks of AIG?s American International Underwriters to became president of AIU. He was named co-chief operating officer in 2002.

Sullivan took over after Spitzer and the SEC began investigating the insurer?s accounting in February 2005, triggering Greenberg?s removal on March 14. By the end of the month, Greenberg had also stepped down as chairman.

On May 26, Spitzer sued AIG, Greenberg, and former Chief Financial Officer Howard Smith for allegedly using reinsurance contracts and other transactions to hide losses and understate liabilities. AIG?s settlement doesn?t resolve cases against Greenberg and Smith, who have vowed to fight Spitzer?s allegations in court. Trials have yet to be scheduled in New York State Supreme Court in New York City.

?There was not a great reservoir of goodwill he could draw upon,? Spitzer says of Greenberg. ?That was fairly surprising to many people because this was always viewed as his company. The board moved rapidly.?

Greenberg declines to comment on his relations with the board. ?Some day I?d like to,? he said.

Under Sullivan, AIG has announced two restatements, the first, on May 31, to lower its net income from 2000 to 2004 by 10 percent and the second, on November 9, to increase retained earnings as of June 30, 2005, by about $500 million.

The insurer has unveiled a liability policy for hedge fund directors and managers, one of 20 new property and casualty products introduced in 2005. AIG plans 30 more for 2006, spokesman Chris Winans says.

AIG posted $8.29 billion in profit, excluding gains from investments and derivatives, in the first nine months of 2005, a 5.4 percent increase from the same period a year earlier.

Earnings from overseas climbed the most, jumping 31 percent to $5.92 billion. That growth underscores why Sullivan must maintain AIG?s relationships in Asia, says Alan Straus, a portfolio manager at Lord Abbett & Co.

?He?s been cementing those relationships in China, in Vietnam, in Hong Kong,? says Straus, who helps manage $100 billion at the Jersey City, New Jersey-based firm, including 11.6 million AIG shares as of December 31.