Prudential creates 15bn grab for AIGs Asian arm

Iain Dey & , : {}

PRUDENTIAL, Britains greatest insurer, is plotting a fifteen billion takeover bid for the Asian resources of the uneasy American opposition AIG.

Tidjane Thiam, the Prus arch executive, is in New York this week end putting a offer to the AIG board.

The Pru would issue new shares to account the understanding in what would be one of the largest ever such fundraisings by a British company.

If he can sign the deal, Thiam will concrete the Prus on all sides as a widespread force in Asia. It already ranks as the largest or second-largest insurer in scarcely each Asian nation open to unfamiliar investors.

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Thiam has only weeks to bind a deal. AIGs Asian commercial operation is due to list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange subsequent month, with a organisation of eight investment banks lined up to hoop the listing. Derailing the boyant would need capitulation from the American government, that owns 80% of AIG after a array of bailouts.

American taxpayers have pumped about 120 billion in to the word firm, creation it the greatest target of state assist anywhere in the world.

AIG lost billions by investments in formidable derivative contracts. Most of the poisonous trade was finished in London by a auxiliary called AIG Financial Products.

The rescue was one of the majority argumentative bailouts of the promissory note crisis, and stays a concentration of open inquiries in America.

AIGs underlying word businesses, that sell car and home word as well as hold up and grant products, sojourn rarely cherished assets.

The Prus move might set off a behest fight with opposition general word groups, that courted AIG over the Asian commercial operation prior to the association motionless to ensue with the boyant plans.

Prudential, that will shortly inform the full-year results, declined to comment.

The Asian understanding comes among stability conjecture about the destiny of the groups British businesses. Resolution, the bid car set up by the businessman Clive Cowdery, is penetrating to take Prus UK operations.

Thiam has regularly pronounced that he needs the cashflow from the British commercial operation to await expansion elsewhere in the universe and to say the groups clever credit rating.

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