Word: aig
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...Former AIG chief executive Maurice (Hank) Greenberg told Congress on Thursday morning that as much as $50 billion in payments that AIG has made in the past few months to banks and other financial firms, including Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, should not have been made. Greenberg believes the banks should be forced to reinvest some of those trading profits in AIG by buying the company's shares...
...cash payments to CDS [credit-default swap] counterparties should never have occurred," Greenberg told a House oversight committee. Greenberg is not alone is raising questions about profits that financial firms have been making on the unwinding of AIG's derivative bets. Last week New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo said he was looking into AIG's trading records to examine whether the payments the company made to other financial firms were improper. (Read "How to Know When the Economy Is Turning...
...Also troubling: Wall Street veterans are complaining that banks and other investment firms - many of which are recipients of federal aid - may be taking advantage of the taxpayer bailout of AIG to boost their profits. "It seems very possible that the banks are forcing AIG to unwind its contracts at a premium," says James Bianco, who runs a financial-markets research firm in Chicago...
...AIG is in the process of unwinding its large derivative-trading book; in the past few months, it has terminated as much as $1.1 billion in derivative contracts. Traders say Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and others have either driven hard bargains with AIG or made specific trades that would benefit from AIG's problems. Those moves are exacerbating the losses at AIG and increasing the cost of the insurer's bailout. "There is an argument to be made that the recent profits at the banks are because of AIG," says Bianco...
...Last month AIG said it had paid out about $50 billion to various financial firms to which it had sold credit-default swaps, which are insurance contracts sold to bond investors and others. When a bond defaults, a holder of a CDS has the right to be reimbursed for the loss by the seller of the contract. AIG was one of the largest sellers of such contracts. Much of the credit insurance AIG sold was on mortgage bonds, which are backed by home loans. As more and more homeowners defaulted, many of those bonds plummeted in value, causing the holders...