Edward M. Liddy - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Analyst · UBS. Your line is open
Thanks and good morning everyone. We have a really an awful lot to cover this morning so bear with us; we are going to try to do all this in about an hour. I think that will leave time for many of your questions if we don't get to them, I invite you to call Charlene at the conclusion of the meeting. Sorry all for the play traffic, but if you turn off all Blackberries and things like that near your phones; it will make it possible for everyone else to hear. On October 3rd, scant five weeks ago, sometimes, it seems like five years, I laid out an initial game plan to address AIG's immediate liquidity problems, to divest assets to repay the government loan, to refocus AIG on its historic strengths, and to restore the company to profitability. At that point, there were a number of unresolved issues that still needed to be addressed. We've been hard at work since then and that work has resulted in the very comprehensive plan we announced this morning in conjunction with the U.S. Treasury, the Federal; Reserve Board, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. We believe this plan is win - win. It sends a strong signal to our policyholders, to governments and the regulators around the world to our business party... partners and counterparties that AIG is in fact on the road to recovery. It gives us a durable capital structure both now and in the future. It addresses the liquidity issues that have threatened AIG. It gives us greater financial flexibility to complete our restructuring for the benefit of all our constituencies. It gives U.S. tax payers a very attractive return on preferred stock, and debt investments in AIG as well as the potential for gains on asset purchases and the future appreciation in AIG common shares which they own. This plan represents a substantial progress over the past six weeks its part of a multi-year journey of which today is really is the second milestone. The third milestone will be the business divestitures and I will talk a little bit more about those in a moment. The subsequent phases of our plan will include appropriately recapitalizing the company after the federal credit facility is paid down. So all investors should recognize that this would be a several year process tied in no small part to the recovery of financial markets around the world. But importantly, following the restructuring transactions we are announcing today, we will have the stability to restore confidence in our global franchise. Business partners and customers can confidently continue to place business with us. Before I go into the details of the restructuring plan and AIG's third quarter results, I want to take this opportunity to clarify certain facts that may have been inaccurately characterized or may have been quite simply misunderstood. I know that many of you have tried to piece together information from different sources to understand the big picture. Our goal on this call is to give you the information you need to clearly understand the plan announced today in its totality as well as each of its components. There is also a substantial amount of detail in our 10-Q which was released this morning. Now, in particular I'd like to focus on just a couple of key points. First, our indebtedness to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York under the original bridge loan currently stands at $61 billion. There have been reports citing indebtedness as high as $123 billion. To get to this number commentators are adding together the $85 billion of total capacity available under the bridge loan and the $37.8 billion available will not currently borrowed under the securities lending facility. We do have 19.9 billion outstanding under that facility but the Federal Reserve Bank of New York holds collateral in the form of third party investment grade securities from our portfolio. So it's apples and oranges that are being compared here. As evidence of why the two amounts should not be added together, the Federal Reserve is now providing an alternate mechanism that will completely extinguish the $37.8 billion facility. Second, the terms of the restructuring are commercial in nature. All of the facilities being provided by the U.S. government are at market rates. Third, as we anticipated to undertake such a dramatic restructuring of the company's businesses, our quarterly earnings are showing, and may continue to exhibit substantial volatility reflecting the unprecedented conditions in global financial markets. Nevertheless, there is stability in our underlying insurance business not withstanding catastrophe losses in competitive market conditions. Our insurance companies remain disciplined in their underwriting, they are well capitalized and they continue to meet or exceed all regulatory requirements. Last, because these businesses remain strong, disciplined, well sequenced process of divestitures has been undertaken. The interest of the tax payers as well as the shareholders and bondholders of AIG will be best served by our ability to offer our remarkable assets for sale as market conditions permit. We expect to announce several key dispositions this year, proving that good deals can get done in this marketplace. But while we will report our progress and announce deals, we will not share a specific schedule for divestitures. Now, let me turn to our discussion of the plan. This plan is designed to accomplish a number of objectives. It creates a durable capital structure for AIG with new equity capital and substantially reduced debt. These are good things. The terms of the debt are restructured to give AIG a lower cost of capital as well as some financing breathing room. The plan directly addresses our securities lending and multi-sector CDO issues. It puts AIG in a much better position to successfully execute our divestiture plan and to emerge as a global insurance company. The plan addresses all of these issues while giving tax payers both an attractive current return on their investment in AIG and the potential for upside from the assets purchased from AIG and in AIG common stock. It is not exactly a bailout. Let me walk you through the current funding sources and how they will change as a result of the restructuring. I think you know when I just hinted at or mentioned there are three components of the current structure. First, we presently have an $85 billion, two-year bridge loan facility from the Federal Reserve Bank in New York against which $61 billion is currently outstanding. That $61 billion carries a LIBOR plus 8.5 and the commitment fee of 2% and the fee on the undrawn portion of 8.5%. Clearly, these terms are not sustainable. Second, we have $37.8 billion securities lending facility from the Federal Reserve of New York, with $19.9 billion currently outstanding and as noted earlier this amount is fully collateralized, it's a liquidity facility not a loan. Third, we are participating in the government's commercial paper funding facility, that's a temporary facility designed to restore liquidity in the commercial paper market. We have an approved line of $20.9 billion, with $8 billion currently outstanding. Note that this is a broadly available program, not a program specific to AIG. Many of America's largest companies are also participating in this program because the commercial paper market simply is not working. The next slide provides a schematic of the comprehensive plan we've announced today. What I think about this plan is as a combination of ongoing financing, which is shown on the top part of the page; and one-time transactions, which are shown on the bottom half. Let's start with the ongoing financing that has several components. First, the U.S. Treasury will purchase $40 billion of newly issued AIG preferred stock. The preferred has a 10% coupon. All the proceeds will be used to pay down a portion of the Federal Reserve credit facility that is currently outstanding. Second, the size of the current credit facility will be amended to reduce the capacity from 85 billion to 60 billion. Its terms will be extended from two years to five years and the interest rate and fee on undrawn portions will be reduced to LIBOR plus 3% on the drawn portion, which will be approximately $21 billion at the outset, and the fee on the undrawn portion will be reduced to 0.75%. Third, AIG will continue to participate in the commercial paper funding facility. That's the ongoing portion. On the bottom of the slide, are diagrams of two one-time transactions we will undertake in partnership with the Federal Reserve. These transactions are designed to address our liquidity issues related to securities lending in multi-sector CDSs. And the last is the securities lending solution, and first just let me remind you how the problem developed and then discuss the solution. In our securities lending program AIG, like most institutional investors lends securities from our portfolios to third parties who will give us cash collateral in return. We invest the cash collateral for the term of the loan. Much of the collateral was invested in residential mortgage-backed securities. With the turmoil in the housing and mortgage markets, these RMBSs have declined sharply in price to levels well below those implied by the underlying cash flows they are producing. When securities lending trades expire or are unwound, we have to return cash to our counterparties, in this case the combination of an ill-liquid market for RMBSs and the attended market value pressures resulted in unprecedented liquidity pressures. This has been a major source of our liquidity short falls. To address this issue, we and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York are creating a new financing entity that will be capitalized with $1 billion of funding from AIG and up to $22.5 billion of funding from the Federal Reserve. This entity will acquire substantially all of the RMBSs from AIG's securities lending program. It's really important that you note, as a result of this transaction, AIG's remaining exposure to losses from its U.S. securities lending program will be limited to declines in market value prior to the closing of this entity and our $1 billion of funding. Similarly, on the bottom right hand portion of slide 3, there is a diagram of our solution to the multi-sector credit default swap issue. Again let me summarize how the problem developed, then explain how the solution addresses the problem. AIG has written credit default swaps against collateralized debt obligations or CDOs which our securities backed by pools of debt. Our credit default swap is essentially an insurance policy which reimburses the holder of the CDO for specified covered events. There are two problems that have developed with our CDSs. First, even though defaults on the securities and loans in the underlying pools haven't risen to levels that have required us to incur significant credit losses, the market prices of the underlying CDOs have declined sharply. As a result, we've been required to write-down our CDS positions. This write-down has caused hits to AIG's equity, which in turn contributed to credit ratings downgrades. Second, our credit default swap contracts also specify that under certain conditions, we have to post cash collateral to our counterparties. This confluence of events has been particularly acute in our multi-sector credit default swaps, which account for less than 25% of our total swap portfolio, but about 95% of our write-downs. So to address this issue, we and the Federal Reserve Board will create a second financing entity that will purchase up to approximately $70 billion face amount of multi-sector CDOs on which AIG has written credit default swaps. As I mentioned approximately 95% of the write-downs AIG financial products has taken to-date is in its CDS portfolio, these were the ones related to the multi-sector CDO. AIG will provide up to $5 billion in subordinated funding, and the Federal Reserve will provide up to $30 billion in senior funding to the financing entities. The CDS contracts will be terminated on multi-sector CDOs that are purchased, and again importantly as a result of this transaction AIG's remaining exposure to losses will be limited to declines in market values of multi-sector CDOs prior to the pricing date of establishing this entity and to our... up to $5 billion funding. Now, AIG will continue to have exposure to CDS contracts on multi-sector CDOs that are not terminated, and as AIG winds down its financial products division, it will also have exposure to other types of remaining CDS contracts, but these have generated substantially smaller total collateral demands than the CDSs in our multi-sector CDOs. So to sum up, the plan we announced today represents a significant step forward for AIG. We still have a lot of work to do to execute this plan. And ultimately, transition to a restructured and recapitalized AIG. But, today's agreements put us in an improved position to succeed and emerge as a focused profitable global insurance company. Before moving on to earnings, let me briefly turn you to slide 4. I will dwell on this slide, but I will merely offer this perspective. The American tax payer has and will be offered considerable returns as a result of the restructuring of AIG. Now, let's turn to a review of third quarter results. Dave Herzog is going to take you through the numbers in a minute but first, I want to give you some perspective on the quarter. The loss we've reported reflects a confluence of really unprecedented events, rather than the core earnings power of AIG's insurance businesses. The strengths of our global franchise allowed us to continue to write significant amounts of new business this quarter. Despite financial market turmoil, continuing price competition in property casualty and all of negative publicity about AIG, our consolidated premiums and other considerations were still $21 billion, up almost 7% from last year. Foreign General had a strong quarter with net premiums written up 11.5%. In Domestic Life, premiums, deposits and other considerations were up nearly 14%. We did see some top-line pressure in the domestic commercial insurance business and Chris will have a couple of comments on that in a few moments. This reflected market concerns following the September 6th announcement as well as our decision, which we communicated to our brokers that we would maintain underwriting discipline and markets, where rates were not adequate to generate appropriate returns. There are now indications that the situation in commercial insurance begin to stabilize in October and our prices are gaining traction in the market. All of our insurance businesses are making a concerted effort to get in front of customers and brokers to address their concerns. Today's announcement should alleviate many of those concerns and put our businesses in a much better position going forward. Nevertheless, AIG's exposure to the U.S. housing market and associated financial instruments has materially undermined our financial performance. And now let me turn it over to Dave Herzog, who will take you through the significant items affecting reported earnings in the quarter. Dave?