Billionaire investor Carl Icahn said he may seek to shake up leadership at American global Group Inc. after Chief Executive Officer Peter Hancock rebuffed his plan to split the insurer into three companies.
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Earlier this month during an interview on FOX Business Network’s Mornings With Maria Icahn said, “AIG would be much better off taking this company and splitting it into 3 or 4 parts or selling a lot of the divisions that they have”.
Last month, Icahn said AIG was “too big to succeed”, a play on the phrase “too big to fail”, which was used during the financial crisis to explain why the government was forced to prevent the total collapse of AIG. Hancock has said AIG benefits from having a diversity of operations and that separating would be harder than Icahn thinks because of regulators and credit-rating firms. The company’s strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its solid stock price performance, largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures and reasonable valuation levels.
“We are aware that Carl Icahn has made an investment in the company”, Sean Collins, a Xerox spokesman said. “Xerox welcomes open communications with shareholders and values constructive dialogue”, Xerox said in a statement.
The company disclosed this in a regulatory filing on Monday evening.
Shares of AIG rose 55 cents to close at $62.76 Monday.
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Icahn already has the support of at least one other billionaire, hedge fund manager John Paulson, who also supports a break-up of AIG. The stake comes to a total share amount of just over 72.2 million shares, making Icahn the second largest shareholder behind Vanguard and ahead of State Street.
