Former American International chief executive Maurice (Hank) Greenberg yesterday paid tribute to the late Sir Edwin A.G. Manton as someone ?without peer? when it came to knowledge of insurance markets.

A founder, under Cornelius Vander Starr, of the insurance empire later to become known as American International Group Inc., Sir Edwin ? better known to friends and colleagues as Jimmy ? died on October 1, aged 96, at his New York home.

A venerable figure in insurance circles, Sir Edwin will also be remembered as a generous supporter of the arts in his native Britain. He was knighted by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 1994 for his charitable services to London?s Tate Gallery.

Mr. Greenberg, who remains chairman of C.V. Starr & Co. and Starr International Company after his ouster from AIG earlier this year, remembered Sir Edwin as ?Mr. International Insurance?.

?Jimmy?s love for the company was tremendous.? Mr. Greenberg said, with Sir Edwin having spent seven decades at AIG. Although mostly retired and wheelchair bound, Sir Edwin continued to periodically report for work at AIG?s 70 Pine Street headquarters in New York, and was still a senior adviser to the company. ?He was a tireless worker who came to the office and worked hard to the very end,? Mr. Greenberg said, in e-mailed comments to .

Sir Edwin was recruited to the C.V. Starr companies in 1933 from a post in France with a Scottish insurance company. At the time the Starr companies were little more than a shadow of today?s AIG ? a commercial insurance giant that spans 131 countries. ?Jimmy Manton had a vision of what an international property-casualty company could be, and set about building it,? said AIG chief executive Martin Sullivan, in a note to employees last week announcing Sir Edwin?s death.

?He was part of the Starr organisation even before AIG existed,? said Mr. Greenberg. Bermuda resident Ernest Stempel, 89, said last night in a telephone interview that Mr. Manton had been his first boss, and over the years, ?a great friend?.

Mr. Stempel, now retired, first worked under Mr. Manton in New York after being hired by the founder C.V. Starr. ?He was an extraordinarily able insurance man, unusually competent and capable.

?He worked his way up from the bottom just like me,? said Mr. Stempel, who made a personal fortune worth billions of dollars working at AIG. Both Mr. Stempel and Mr. Greenberg are listed on the annual Forbes? list of the world?s wealthiest.

In addition to his longstanding career with AIG, Sir Edwin was also one of 12 original voting shareholders to set up Starr International Company, a Panamanian company based in Bermuda that served for more than three decades as a compensation vehicle for chosen AIG executives. His death brings the number of survivors with control over Starr, better known as SICo, to four ? Mr. Greenberg and three other retired AIG executives: Houghton Freeman, John J. Roberts and Mr. Stempel.

Questions now surrounds the future of privately-held SICo which holds about $18 billion in AIG stock as its largest asset. The company is mired in a legal tussle, as AIG seeks, in a New York court, to wrest control of the lucrative company away from Mr. Greenberg.

Mr. Greenberg was ushered out of AIG after nearly four decades running the company, as a regulatory probe of accounting irregularities and AIG?s undisclosed ties to offshore reinsurers it effectively controlled, turned heated.

Sir Edwin came to the Island, on occasion, for meetings, Mr. Stempel said. As a transplanted Brit, Sir Edwin liked to joke he was referred to as a ?Brit? in America and a ?Yank? in England, according to Mr. Sullivan?s internal note.

Others remember Sir Edwin as one of the most generous supporters of the arts, donating ?12 million to London?s Tate Gallery in the 1990s - one of the largest donations it had ever received. Earlier, he was one of the patrons who helped the gallery raise ? 3 million to save celebrated England landscape artist John Constable?s ?Waterloo Bridge? from being exported abroad. These gifts, amongst others, were made anonymously, according to a report last week in UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph. His identity was revealed when he was knighted.

An avid Constable collector, Sir Edwin earlier promised one of the Constable?s in his personal collection to the Tate on his death. Sir Edwin?s fondness for Constable was natural enough, having been raised in the picturesque area of Essex known as ?Constable Country?. ?He left big tracks and will be missed by all of us,? said Mr. Greenberg, who described Sir Edwin as ?a man of many sides, who collected art and loved culture?.

Sir Edwin is survived by daughter Diana and other family members.