CHARTIS FOCUSES ON VALUE OVER VOLUME, HANCOCK SAYS

AIG's Chartis p/c division has shifted its focus to profitability over market share over the last year, division CEO Peter Hancock said at aninvestor conference in New York on Thursday. "It's a business that I'd say has been managed to growth over the last 30 years", said Mr Hancock, who joined AIG in February 2010 as executive vice-president of finance and was named head of Chartis in March 2011. "That's given us an edge, but I think that at some point we oversaturated certain markets, and so my direction to the team is very much to recalibrate our objectives from volume to value". In the effort to boost returns, Chartis under Mr Hancock's direction has turned its sights to emerging markets and cut business in lines that necessitate larger capital holdings. Mr Hancock also said that the crisis that hit AIG in 2008/09 "had a silver lining. It punctured the hubris that happens in large companies that are leaders in their industry, where people think they have all the answers, and it made people open to new ways of doing things. ... We had to demonstrate to the world that there really was a valuable franchise to be preserved". He also said that AIG has "a great appetite" to repurchase shares from the US Treasury, which has been selling shares, reducing its stake in the company from 92% to 61%. However, AIG's buybacks may be constrained if the company is placed under regulation by the Federal Reserve, he said.