Author: rafferty

AIG Advisor Group: They’re Back

by Paul Menchaca and featured in Financial Planning
October, 2009:

It is late afternoon on the last day of August, and Larry Roth sits in a beige and ivory conference room on the 15th floor of One World Financial Center in Manhattan. The setting sun is beaming through a large window behind him. Most of the office has emptied out for the day. Roth, the CEO of AIG Advisor Group, is considering the question at hand: After relentless bad publicity for a massive government bailout to rescue a company rendered nearly insolvent by the reckless deal making of a small unit in London, wouldn’t it have been easier to have made a clean break from the troubled parent company?

I don’t think that’s true at all,”

AIG Advisor Group May Finally Have A Buyer

by Bruce Kelly and featured in Investment News
August, 2009:

With discussions regarding the sale of the AIG Advisor Group dragging on for months, representatives and financial advisers who are affiliated with the beleaguered broker-dealers of the firm are relieved now that two final bidders have emerged.

Two private-equity firms, Light-year Capital LLC and Lovell Minnick Partners LLC, with strong ties to retail broker-dealers, are in the race for the AIG Advisor Group, a network of broker-dealers that houses about 6,000 independent registered reps and investment advisers.

A winner could be announced in the next few weeks, sources said.

The price that the AIG Advisor Group would command isn’t clear. The most recent rounds of negotiations came in the late winter and early spring,

Sale of AIG Advisor Group Seems Doubtful as Reps Head for Exits

by Josh Kosman and featured in New York Post
June, 2009:

American International Group’s efforts to sell its broker-dealer business, AIG Advisor Group, have hit a snag — and it’s causing jitters among the firm’s 6,000 representatives and financial advisers. Division CEO Arthur Tambaro in April said that AIG was in final discussions with a potential buyer. But two months later, no deal has been struck. What’s more, two sources told The Post that mutual-fund giant Fidelity Investments considered providing financing for an unnamed bidder, but backed out. Fidelity declined to comment. The lack of a deal for AIG Advisor Group has already led to some departures among its staff, and some say if a deal isn’t struck by year-end more than half of the company’s employees may head for the exit.