Bailout capital recovery: US Treasury to sell $5b of AIG shares

WASHINGTON: The US Treasury Department announced Friday it will sell $5 billion of its American International Group (AIG) shares, with AIG lined up to buy back up to $3 billion of them. The Treasury said that the common stock would be publicly offered at $30.50 per share, and that AIG had agreed to purchase 98.3 million shares at that price. The Treasury has been winding down the government’s bailouts of companies during the 2008-2009 financial crisis that initially targeted banks but controversially were expanded to include insurance giant AIG and automakers. AIG, at the time the world’s largest insurance company and closely involved in the risky derivatives at the centre of the crisis, was rescued from bankruptcy by a record $182 billion government bailout programme. AIG has sold off huge assets as it restructured itself back to a path of profitability, buying back taxpayer-funded shares along the way.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 5^th, 2012.