AIG Pressing Hard For Freedom, Will Sell Assets to Repurchase Shares

PUBLISHED: 03 Aug 2012 @ 23:20 | Comments (0) | More info about Ed Liston

American International Group Inc. (NYSE:AIG) is mulling over to buy back its large numbers of shares from the government, in order to free itself from state’s control, according to Wall Street Journal.

The Journal, citing sources, said that the insurer will try to buy back majority of stake from the government by next fall.

At present, the U.S. government holds 61% stake and should AIG succeed in bringing it down (government stake) to 50% then it would be considered as great triumph for the company and its management team.

Nonetheless, dilution of the government stake is likely to increase AIG’s agony as the Federal Reserve will start overseeing the company. As the U.S. government will be lose the ownership of AIG, the Federal Reserve will regulate the company.

Four years ago, AIG, one of the beneficiaries of financial industry bailout plan, was nationalized. From that moment, AIG is pushing hard to accumulate as much cash as possible in order to repurchase its shares and use in some other activities.

Analysts believe that if asset sales, in line with AIG expectations help generating funds in the range of $10bn to $15bn then government’s stake could drop well below 30%.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR FREE ON ADVFN, the world's leading stocks and shares information website, provides the private investor with all the latest high-tech trading tools and includes live price data streaming, stock quotes and the option to access 'Level 2' data on all of the world's key exchanges (LSE, NYSE, NASDAQ, Euronext etc).

This area of the ADVFN.com site is for independent financial commentary. These blogs are provided by independent authors via a common carrier platform and do not represent the opinions of ADVFN Plc. ADVFN Plc does not monitor, approve, endorse or exert editorial control over these articles and does not therefore accept responsibility for or make any warranties in connection with or recommend that you or any third party rely on such information. The information available at ADVFN.com is for your general information and use and is not intended to address your particular requirements. In particular, the information does not constitute any form of advice or recommendation by ADVFN.COM and is not intended to be relied upon by users in making (or refraining from making) any investment decisions. Authors may or may not have positions in stocks that they are discussing but it should be considered very likely that their opinions are aligned with their trading and that they hold positions in companies, forex, commodities and other instruments they discuss.