Fallen US insurance giant American International Group owes financial firms some 10 billion dollars on speculative trades that turned sour, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
The trades have not been explicitly revealed before and would not be covered by the US government's bailout package of more than 150 billion dollars for the troubled company, the Journal reported, citing unnamed sources.
Details of the trades mark the first indication that AIG may have been gambling with its own capital, the Journal wrote.
The government intervened to rescue AIG from collapse in September and has since dramatically expanded its rescue funds as the firm suffers from failed bets on complex financial instruments.
An AIG spokesman told the Journal that the trades were not speculative bets but "credit protection instruments."
He said the trades have been fully disclosed already and amount to less than 10 billion dollars of the firm's 71.6 billion dollars exposure to derivative contracts on debt pools, or collateralized debt obligations, as of September 30.
AIG was the world's largest insurer before the global credit crisis brought it down.
The trades have not been explicitly revealed before and would not be covered by the US government's bailout package of more than 150 billion dollars for the troubled company, the Journal reported, citing unnamed sources.
Details of the trades mark the first indication that AIG may have been gambling with its own capital, the Journal wrote.
The government intervened to rescue AIG from collapse in September and has since dramatically expanded its rescue funds as the firm suffers from failed bets on complex financial instruments.
An AIG spokesman told the Journal that the trades were not speculative bets but "credit protection instruments."
He said the trades have been fully disclosed already and amount to less than 10 billion dollars of the firm's 71.6 billion dollars exposure to derivative contracts on debt pools, or collateralized debt obligations, as of September 30.
AIG was the world's largest insurer before the global credit crisis brought it down.
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