NEW YORK, Sept. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Standard & Poor's Ratings Services today said it placed its ratings on American International Group Inc. (AA-/A-1+) and subsidiaries on CreditWatch with negative implications.
This action follows a significant decline in AIG's share price and an increase in credit spreads on the company's debt.
"We believe that AIG has sufficient capital and liquidity to meet its policy obligations and potential collateral requirements, which are significantly greater than the expected cash losses on the mortgage-related assets," said Standard & Poor's credit analyst Rodney Clark. "However, additional market value losses will place some strain on the company's resources."
Given the movement in the share price and credit spreads, we now believe AIG's potential access to the capital market may be more restricted in the short term.
Standard & Poor's will continue discussions with the company over the coming weeks regarding liquidity and capital plans. Once we have more clarity on these issues, we could affirm the current ratings on the holding company and operating companies or lower them by one to three notches.
Complete ratings information is available to subscribers of RatingsDirect, the real-time Web-based source for Standard & Poor's credit ratings, research, and risk analysis, at http://www.ratingsdirect.com/. All ratings affected by this rating action can be found on Standard & Poor's public Web site at http://www.standardandpoors.com/; select your preferred country or region, then Ratings in the left navigation bar, followed by Credit Ratings Search.
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