To What Degree Were AIG’s Operating Insurance Subsidiaries Sound? (Epilogue)
Whew, I’m glad that one is done. Thanks to the nice ladies at AIG who sent me the Statutory books. My apologies for any difficulties with the HTML formatting. For those that would like to read it in PDF form, here it is. For those that would like to play around with the data that I extracted into Excel, here that is.
Comments are welcome.
I’m planning on resuming a more normal writing schedule. The AIG work took a lot out of me. Future projects include finishing off the Trend Following book review, the John Davidson series, and one article where I ask my readers for a bit of help. Till then, stay well.
April 30th, 200911:50 am at
Thanks. I went through the PDF and shall do so a second time.
Not surprising that securities lending / swaps to mortgage backed securities played a big role.
May 2nd, 200911:59 am at
Fascinating work. A few things I don’t quite understand and some additional questions to your basic summary analysis.
1. Effectively it looks like securities lending would have rendered (6) of the life company subsidiaries insolvent without Government intervention. Does this mean the loss went into statutory reserves or is that just loss against what would have otherwise gone back to the parent AIG? I understand little about SAP, GAAP, and holding company finances.
2. Notwithstanding your overall evaluation of the AIG parent, the articulated plan has been to liquidate the “crown jewels” e.g., the AIU/P&C splinter. Marketing the domestic life operations was put on hold this past quarter under the auspices of re-evaluating/re-packaging the group in a manner that: (a) would be palatable to purchasers given current market conditions and (b) would affect value for the government in its creditor role. Can your analysis and evaluation also go to the value of the domestic life operations in part or in whole – either as an IPO or an acquisition? Could you make any broad/speculative rules of thumb statements based on your analysis?