The government may sell its stake in American International Group Inc. through a public stock offering sometime after 2013, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
GAO officials talk about the future of AIG, New York (NYSE:AIG), and other large recipients of federal financial assistance in a report on federal financial assistance to private-sector companies prepared for congressional committees.
The government has provided $134 billion in indirect and direct assistance to AIG, with the majority made through government investments in AIG stock, officials say.
“When AIG will be able to pay the government completely back for its assistance is currently unknown because the federal government’s exposure to AIG is increasingly tied to the future health of AIG, its restructuring efforts, and its ongoing performance as more debt is exchanged for equity,” Gene Dodaro, the acting comptroller general of the United States, writes in a letter describing the GAO’s findings.
Officials in the U.S. Treasury Department and at the Federal Reserve Board told GAO staffers that AIG must repay a Federal Reserve Bank of New York credit facility before the government’s AIG trust can dispose of its AIG stock, Dodaro says.
AIG is supposed to repay the credit facility