AIG bailout that angered Bernanke winds down with Treasury sale

American International Group’s rescue is coming to an end more than four years after the US took over the company to save the global economy in a bailout that fuelled resentment against Wall Street.

The US Treasury Department is selling its last 234.2 million shares of AIG in its sixth offering of the insurer’s stock, the government said. Shares priced at US$32.50 apiece, according to two people familiar with the sale who asked not to be identified because the US didn’t publicly disclose the price.

Taxpayers owned as much as 92 per cent of AIG after saving a firm that insured 100,000 municipalities, retirement plans and companies and was a counterparty to some of the biggest banks.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has said saving AIG after it was hobbled by mortgage-related bets made him “more angry” than any other measure the government undertook to counter the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

“There weren’t a lot of options, let’s face it,” Robert Willumstad, chief executive officer of AIG when the firm was rescued, said last month. “It was controversial, it was a big risk, but one would argue today that the government got its money back and a healthy profit.”

AIG has gained 44 per cent this year, closing on Monday at US$33.36 a share. Proceeds from the latest sale add to the government’s profit, which was US$15.1 billion on the rescue as of mid-September.