AIG announces $9bn stock offering
American International Group and the US Treasury will sell nearly $9bn in AIG stock, they said yesterday, a huge offering but less than half of what had been contemplated earlier this year.
AIG shares fell more than 2 per cent in premarket trading, continuing the slide that has knocked more than a third off the company’s value in the last four months. At the premarket price, AIG is just pennies from the government’s $28.72 break-even point.
Based on that figure and the government’s total shareholding, the Treasury would have to raise just over $47.5bn from AIG share sales to break even. When AIG was rescued in September 2008, few expected it would even exist today. The company received $182bn in bailouts.
But the prospective offering of 100 million shares by the company and 200 million shares by the Treasury has been pressured by the slide in AIG’s stock.