Piqued Greenberg eyes AIG assets

The former chairman and chief executive of American International Group Inc. wrote a letter to newly appointed CEO Edward M. Liddy announcing his desire to bid on some of the assets that the insurer will sell off as part of its agreement to take an $85 billion lifeline from the federal government.

In his Sept. 29 letter, which was obtained by The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Greenberg said that the company had begun liquidating its assets in privately negotiated transactions with no transparency and without allowing alternative buyers to provide what he said would be the best price for shareholders.

“I would have thought that the interest that I and the Starr Cos. had previously expressed in possibly purchasing assets that the company might decide to sell would have caused the company to contact me,” he wrote.

“That obviously has not occurred.”

The move is an apparent about-face from actions Mr. Greenberg and Starr International Co. Inc., the Hamilton, Bermuda, and Dublin, Ireland, firm of which he is chairman, took last week.

At that time, he sold off 5 million of his own AIG shares at $3.77 each, while Starr International unloaded 35 million shares at $3.06 apiece.