Goldman Sachs Tops AIG Couterparty List
March 16, 2009 by Tisa Silver
Filed under Finance
The government saved AIG to avoid systemic risk to the global economy. Since then, the insurance conglomerate has paid out $105 billion in bailout money to cover deals with counterparties. Guess what company sits atop the AIG counterparty list?
Photo by srqpix, courtesy of flickr
Goldman Sachs!
According to MarketWatch, Goldman Sachs received the largest single sum: $12.9 billion.
Of the funds, $2.5 billion was collateral for credit default swaps (CDS) and another $5.6 billion went towards the cancellation of other CDS contracts.
I found this interesting since Goldman Sachs (Ticker: GS) had long been regarded as the bank that managed to avoid the pitfalls of the credit crisis.
Goldman managed to do far better than some of the other banks, but I never believed that the bank could totally avoid the crisis.
In December 2008, Goldman Sachs reported its first quarterly loss ever (since going public). The bank posted a $2.12 billion loss which equates to almost five dollars per share. For more details on the loss, read this article from The Washington Post.
This afternoon, shares of AIG (Ticker: AIG) are trading over 80 percent higher, while Goldman’s shares are down about 3 percent.
