Thursday's Headlines: Wal-Mart

(At 8:20 a.m. EDT)

Thursday's Early Headlines

American International Group (AIG Quote) will spin off its Asian life insurance unit in a $5 billion to $10 billion Hong Kong initial public offering in the first quarter of next year, according to a Dow Jones Newswires report. AIG will likely sell one-quarter to one-third of American International Assurance and maintain majority control of the operation, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Lehman Brothers may spin off its remaining assets in order to help pay off $200 billion still owed to creditors. The Wall Street Journal said those Lehman assets include a collection of battered real-estate and private-equity holdings.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial (MTU Quote) will cancel its plan to pay $262 million for Citigroup's (C Quote) Japanese trust bank, according to a Reuters report. In December, Mitsubishi agreed to buy NikkoCiti Trust and Banking but has decided to walk away from the deal after failing to acquire Citi's Japanese brokerage earlier this month, according to the report.

Bank of America (BAC Quote) raised $7.3 billion from its sale of its stake in China Construction Bank, as had been reported earlier in the week. Buyers included China Life Insurance (LFC Quote) and its affiliates, as well as an unidentified foreign fund and BOCI Asia, an investment banking arm of the Bank of China. BofA sold more than 13.5 billion shares, or a nearly 6% stake, leaving the U.S. bank with about 11% of CCB's shares.

MBIA (MBI Quote) has been sued 18 global financial institutions, including Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase (JPM Quote) for splitting into a "good bank" unit that guarantees municipal bonds and a "bad bank" unit that insures mortgage-backed structured bonds. The banks claim MBIA's split has reduced its ability to pay policyholders.