AIG: the biggest quarterly loss in corporate history

A massive $61.7 billion loss for AIG – that is the quarterly loss for the insurance giant, a record for the world. That comes to a loss of $465 $465,000 every minute of every day in that quarter. The full-year loss comes in over $100 billion.

Nevertheless, the U.S. Government sees AIG as a systemically-important company due to its involvement in the Credit Default Swaps market. Therefore, it has decided to up the ante and continue providing this company with tens of billions more in liquidity.

As I have indicated in a previous post, bailouts are the worst of all potential policy responses. These are large sums that I believe the American people will not support. Either Americans are an incredibly docile lot or we are about to see a sea change in taxpayers’ attitude.

Read below for the details of the losses and bailout

U.S. government near deal on another AIG bailout

This is in via Reuters: American International Group Inc is close to a deal with the U.S. government that would ease the terms of its bailout, provide a further equity commitment and help it pay down debt, a person familiar with the matter said on Saturday. The revision would be the latest sign of how

Disappearance of capital sources is true cause of Lehman failure and AIG rescue

Why did Lehman really fail? The equity window is effectively closed for most financial services companies. This fact was the true trigger for the meltdown in AIG and Lehman and the problems at WaMu, HBOS and Merrill Lynch.

Moreover, it will be the trigger for a lot of the financial services bankruptcies going forward

AIG: a short post-mortem

The meltdown of the world’s largest insurer AIG (AIG) makes the stakes of this credit crisis plain to all. In my view, the AIG situation and the subsequent turmoil in financial markets could have been avoided. The markets were clearly on edge at this time last week. However, Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke, worried about

The Federal Reserve bails out AIG

At 9:00 PM EDT, the Federal Reserve posted a statement on its website that it has decided to offer AIG an $85 billion line of credit at a penalty rate in return for all of AIG as collateral. In addition, the Federal Reserve will receive an equity interest of 79.9% of the company. Note: the

AIG situation looks critical

One reason I came out this morning against the Fed and the U.S. Treasury’s decision to allow Lehman Brothers to go bankrupt is the arbitrariness of its decision-making process. Lehman is easily more of a systemic risk than Bear Stearns and is certainly a larger company. Why let Lehman fail? Why rescue Fannie and Freddie?

Brace yourself!

In case you missed it, the financial system in the U.S. is near collapse. This weekend was unbelievable. Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. The world’s largest insurer AIG is looking for the Fed to help it avoid collapse and Merrill Lynch was forced to close a deal with Bank of America to save it’s own

AIG: looking to raise $20 billion

Update: 810 PM EDT: Rush Is On to Prevent A.I.G. From Failing Update: 1045 PM EDT: A.I.G. Seeks $40 Billion in Fed Aid to Survive Update: 810 AM EDT: See my post on what to expect this morning in the market and my (cursory) analysis of the BofA-Merrill deal. Lots of other news on the

AIG down; Lehman and WaMu looking to be sold

The world of financial services in not looking terribly stable in the wake of the Frannie nationalization. In fact, things are as jumbled as they have ever been. The latest news has AIG down 30% and both WaMu and Lehman brothers on the auction block. Given the pace of the news cycle these past few

Relative value in financial services

Not every financial services sector company is a basket case destined for bankruptcy. There are many well-run lower risk organizations in the bunch. Moreover, let’s not blame the banking model for individual companies’ woes. The Economist had a good article this weekend highlighting the fact that it is not the universal banking model which is

What AIG’s losses mean

AIG has long been one of the largest and best-capitalized insurance and financial-services organization in the world. Before recent scandals, it was one of a few S&P 500 corporations in the U.S. with a AAA rating. Yet, it just reported a massive $11 billion writedown to go alongside it’s other previous writedowns, causing its stock to suffer its worse day ever. Moreover, it has not ruled out further capital raising in order to shore up its weakening balance sheet

AIG Poised to Absorb $5 Billion Losses

It looks like AIG is poised to join the ranks of UBS, Citigroup, and Merrill in leading the write-offs by financial institutions. Bloomberg is reporting that AIG is ready to write off another $5 billion. June 27 (Bloomberg) — American International Group Inc. plans to absorb losses for a dozen insurance units after their securities-lending