U.S. Treasury to Sell More AIG Common Stock

The U.S. Treasury Department said on Friday it plans a third sale of the common stock of American International Group that it acquired as part of the government bailout of the insurer in 2008, at the height of the financial crisis.

The Treasury said the size and price of the offering are to be determined. Buyers purchased $6 billion of AIG common stock in March and $5.8 billion worth in May 2011.

AIG has said it intends to buy up to $2 billion of the stock sold in the offering, the Treasury Department said in a statement. AIG bought around $3 billion worth of stock in the March sale, a Treasury official said.

The Treasury and the Federal Reserve made $182 billion available to prop up the company, which couldn't meet its credit insurance obligations when housing markets crashed. U.S. authorities retain approximately $44 billion of that investment, a Treasury official said.

The AIG rescue was the largest U.S. government bailout of a private company in history.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley have been hired as bookrunners for the offering, Treasury said.

Treasury said last month it expects that many of the financial crisis programs it and other banking authorities implemented will end up making a profit for taxpayers. (Reporting By Mark Felsenthal; Editing by Bernard Orr and Tim Dobbyn)