American International Group Inc (AIG) said on Tuesday its board of directors will weigh up whether to take part in a shareholder lawsuit against the US government over its US$182 billion bailout of the insurer.
If AIG decides to join the complaint, which seeks US$25 billion in damages, it would pit the company against the US government, which rescued it in 2008 from collapsing under the weight of huge losses on mortgage-backed securities and other toxic assets AIG said that its directors would take up the matter yesterday and expects they will have reached a decision by the end of the month.
Starr International Co Inc, the investment firm of former AIG chief executive office Maurice Greenberg, filed the lawsuit in November 2011 on behalf of the firm and AIG shareholders.
The complaint, filed in the US Court of Federal Claims and the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, asserts that the government did not provide shareholders fair compensation when it took a nearly 80 percent stake in the insurer as part of its bailout.
As a result, the government violated the constitution, Starr claims.
AIG said that, by law, its board must consider three options: take over the lawsuit and pursue the claims on its own; attempt to prevent the claims from being pursued by Starr; or, allow Starr to continue to pursue the complaint on AIG’s behalf.
The firm said that, should it elect not to let Starr pursue its claims on the company’s behalf, Starr would likely challenge the move.
In such a scenario, should Starr prevail in the case, AIG would not receive any damages or portion of a potential settlement.
The US Court of Federal Claims denied a request by the government to dismiss the lawsuit, which means the case will go forward regardless of AIG’s participation.
The government came to the rescue of AIG in September 2008, at the depths of the financial meltdown.
The New York-based company did business with hundreds of firms around the world, and officials feared its collapse would wreck the financial system.
AIG’s bailout was the largest of the Wall Street rescue packages.
Since the financial meltdown, AIG has undergone a significant restructuring which has cut the size of the company nearly in half aimed at focusing on its core insurance operations.
In 2010, the company spun off Asian life insurer AIA Group in Hong Kong’s biggest ever initial public offering to raise US$20 billion, which was used to pay bailout debt.
In November last year, AIG posted a third-quarter profit of nearly US$2 billion thanks to strength in its insurance operations and investment returns. In the same period a year earlier it lost US$4 billion.
The US Department of the Treasury announced last month that it had sold all of its remaining shares in AIG, ending up with US$22.7 billion more than it funneled to the company during the height of the financial crisis.
Shares in AIG ended regular trading down US$0.28 cents at US$35.65. However, over the last 12 months the stock is up more than 50 percent.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day