AIG announced its monumental restructuring Monday, soon after the Obama Treasury Department announced it would hand over another $30 billion to help the failing insurer get back on its feet . . . hopefully.

The new AIU Holdings will include virtually all of AIG’s property/casualty insurance business. CNNMoney.com stated that executives, in a phone call to clients, said the new company would “on its own rank as the world’s largest property/casualty company.”

The restructuring is being done in hopes of freeing AIG from its debt and bad investments, as well as helping to retain key employees and customers. The new unit would consist of AIG’s US and international commercial insurance business and some of its personal lines, according to statements from executives in the phone call.

Something must be done. AIG reported a mind-blowing $62 billion loss in just 92 days. In only 92 days, the company lost $470,000 a minute! The AP reported some startling comparisons about this loss:

• Just consider that the $62 billion could have funded the salaries of every player of every Major League Baseball team in 2008, about 23 times. It also could have covered the salary of the New York Yankees' Alex Rodriguez, the highest paid player in baseball in 2008 at $28 million, about 2,202 times.
• AIG's loss is more than Bill Gates' net worth of $57 billion as of last September, according to Forbes magazine's "400 Richest Americans" list that had Microsoft Corp. founder Gates as No. 1.
• The U.S. government provided $62 billion for immediate relief and rescue efforts in the months after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
• If $62 billion was spread across the U.S. population, Americans could each get about $200.
• AIG's loss amounts to 92 percent of the $67.4 billion that Americans spent at world's largest retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in the fourth quarter, which includes the holiday season.
• It would take a person spending $1 million per day, every day, the next 169 years to spend as much money as AIG lost during the fourth quarter, which lasted just 92 days.

AIG's quarterly loss totaled $61.7 billion for the October to December period, about 12 times the $5.3 billion it lost in the same quarter of 2007. That was more than half the $114.53 billion lost by nearly all other Standard & Poor's 500 companies combined in the fourth quarter. This is the first quarter ever that the S&P 500 has tallied a loss.

Do you think the formation of AIU Holdings will help bring AIG back to life?