The crumbling empire of American International Group Inc is helping to pave Wall Street with gold. Auctions of the bailed-out insurer s assets have generated more than half a billion dollars in fees since its near-collapse in September 2008, with every major Wall Street bank getting a piece of the action, estimates from Freeman Consulting show. The largest sale assignments came to fruition this quarter, when, in a space of just a week, AIG struck deals to sell two major foreign life insurance businesses, one each to Prudential Plc and MetLife Inc, for some $51 billion. Those two sales have also ...

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