Dallas, Texas 01/30/2014 (FINANCIALSTRENDS) – American International Group Inc. (NYSE:AIG) saw its shares rising by almost 2.5% as the reports from Bank of America Corp. emerged that the insurer could go through a share buy back plan of almost $10 billion spread across the tenure the next two years.
Bank Of America’s Report
In their research notes to investors, the team of analysts at Bank of America, headed by Jay Cohen, have included AIG as the top among casualty and property insurers for the year 2014. Recently, there were reports that the AIG’s CEO,Robert Benmosche, is looking at the options of returning more capital to the shareholder’s as it completed the U.S. bailout repayments by the end of the year 2012.In this direction, Benmosche had announced its first dividend since 2008 recession and share buyback plan of $1 billion, last August.
The company also settled a deal during the last month, under which it sold it’s plane leasing unit, in New York, for $5 billion. AIG has been seeking buyers for its International Lease Finance Corp.since 2008, the year, in which, it received the government bailout of $182.3 billion. But, Aercap Holdings NV showed interest recently and bought the unit for partly $3 billion in consideration of cash and the remaining in the form of common stock. This sale should follow a more aggressive capital management step, according to the analysts.
In US1 List
In the meanwhile, the team has also added AIG in the US1 list as they think that the poor performance in Q3 results has already been factored into the pricing of the stock and it is oversold. As per them, the company has strong near term catalysts to drive its growth.
According to the experts, the company is expected to get advantage from underwriting and a higher commercial coverage price. They also see its expenses go down, which remained high during the last two years on account of investments.