American International Group, Inc. (NYSE: AIG) is running this morning. The stock is trading higher this morning on a debt rating comment from last night. It turns out that Moody’s might have some relevance after all with the gains we are seeing. Moody’s issued a report last night noting that AIG will be able to repay its Federal Reserve credit line, and that it will be able to repay much or all of the investment from the US Treasury Department’s if financial markets stabilize. That is still an “IF” and not a definite event.
The report noted a stabilization in its third quarter core insurance operations, and the rating reflects an understanding that the government will continue to work with the troubled financial giant as the company’s restructuring is heavily dependent upon and reliant upon government assistance.
The ratings agency call also endorsed Robert Benmosche as its new CEO over his strategy to rebuild some of the business operations that the company was previously going to just fire sell at depressed prices just to look good to the public.
Moody’s further noted on the cautious side that a decline in the value of company assets could hurt its ability to repay its debt obligations, and that could also lead to further downgrades of the debt ratings. The rise is also despite an article from TheStreet.com panning it as a zombie stock that will kill you.
AIG shares are up almost 7% at $38.67 in the pre-market trading. So far we have only seen about 300,000 shares trade, but that should pick up exponentially as the opening bell gets closer to the 9:30 ring time.
JON C. OGG
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