AIG chief sees company fading away

NEW YORK, April 13 (UPI) -- American International Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Edward Liddy said he imagined the one-time corporate giant would shrink beyond recognition.

"AIG will continue to get smaller and smaller and smaller, until it doesn't register on anyone's Richter scale," Liddy said in an interview, the Chicago Tribune reported Monday.

He expects to run the various company divisions until they can be sold or offered as separate pubic companies, he said. What does not sell will be spun off to the U.S. government, which owns 80 percent of the company after a series of bailouts amounting to $170 billion.

Once the largest U.S. insurance company, "people used to think there was a pie with 15 pieces. There's only two pieces in this pie," said Morningstar Inc. analyst Bill Bergman. "The stuff you thought you could liquidate, you found out you can't because of the loss of confidence," he said.

Bergman said the company could expand its insurance business to "grow its way out of the problem," but Liddy said the company was headed in the other direction.

"Oh, no, no, no. If anything, we're taking on much less," he said.