NYSE Admits AIG Delisting Goof-Up

Oops.

The New York Stock Exchange said late Wednesday that it had mistakenly posted a notice that it planned to suspend and delist shares of American International Group (AIG), the troubled insurance company that was the subject of a $180 billion government bailout.

The NYSE said it posted the notice on its Web site, but that the information was incorrect. The Big Board said it removed the information as soon as it noticed it was there.

AIG, based in New York, began its first day of trading Wednesday after a 1-for-20 reverse stock split that catapulted the face value of its shares from just over a dollar to more than $23 a share. But the shares closed off 22%. It is unclear when the erroneous delisting notice was posted and what role it had in AIG’s selloff.

The government stepped in with two separate government bailouts last year after AIG found itself on the wrong end of billions of dollars of real-estate derivatives transactions. As a result, the government now owns roughly 80% in AIG, which has been trying to sell assets to pay back its bailout loans.