Mumbai: The current liquidity crisis at American International Group (AIG) may come as a blessing in disguise for its former CEO Hank Greenberg to stage a comeback.

AIG is an assortment of businesses with interests in areas ranging from aircraft leasing to life insurance and pension plans. While most parts of its operations have been swept under by the US financial market crisis, AIG claims its insurance unit and the aircraft leasing arms are still profitable.

With investments in development projects and governments in Asia, AIG's business model is still profitable and that explains former CEO Hank Greenberg's interest in AIG's assets. Greenberg, who was forced to resign in 2005 over allegations of fraud from the New York-based insurer, still owns 13.6 per cent of AIG via his investment firm CV Starr.

The Greenberg-led investor group is also considering purchasing certain parts of AIG as well as making loans to the company.

AIG's general insurance business, which accounted for nearly half its $110 billion in revenue last year, provides some of the most unusual types of coverage, like insurance against kidnapping and protection from suits against a company's officers and directors.

The group claims that its companies are the largest underwriters of commercial and industrial insurance in the US. Its policies cover everything from environmental liability for companies to auto insurance.

Its weakest link is the London-based financial products unit, part of the financial services group, which was exposed to sub prime linked securities - the types that forced Lehman Brothers into Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings.

The financial products group sold credit-default swaps, mostly to European banks. As home values have fallen, the value of the underlying mortgages has declined, and AIG has had to reduce the value of the securities on its books.

AIG's asset management group that included a private banking subsidiary for the wealthy, a broker dealer and another unit that manages mutual funds, also suffered losses – in the last quarter of 2007 and $314 million in the second quarter of this year. The losses, however, were not enough to push the company to the brink.

Its aircraft leasing business, which owns more than 900 planes and is part of the company's financial services group, is still profitable.

AIG's other real estate exposures include investments by subsidiary, American General Finance that makes home loans and another subsidiary, the United Guaranty Corporation that provides mortgage guarantee insurance. There are some other units as well that buy mortgage-backed securities directly.

AIG's life insurance business operates in 50 countries while other units that offer products like health insurance and retirement services operate in countries like Japan and the United States.
AIG claims to be the largest life insurance company in the Philippines. Its private bank is based in Zurich.

Its Asian asset management business, with investments mostly in Taiwan, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Singapore,  has $115 billion in assets.

Its Asian investments cover development projects like toll roads in the Philippines to Seoul's international finance center. It is also a major investor in the Taiwan government.
As of February, AIG held $14.2 billion in Taiwan government bonds, 13.1 per cent of Taiwan's total issued government bonds.

Founded by Cornelius Vander Starr, a World War I veteran, American International Group started off in Shanghai, China, in 1919 and has its business deeply rooted in Asia.
Vander Starr travelled to Asia with just 300 Japanese yen in his pocket and started the firm in Shanghai with a local partner to sell marine and fire insurance. He soon expanded business throughout China and into the Philippines and Indonesia, hiring local talent.

Over the years, AIG's business has grown so complex that neither the company's annual reports to shareholders nor its regulatory filings offer a complete view of its complex corporate structure.

As of today, nearly half of AIG's 116,000 direct employees - about 62,000 people - are in Asia. And, despite its current woes, the global empire that the later Vander Starr at AIG, Maurice R Greenberg, built could offer attractive investment opportunities to competitors as well.