AIG: Financial Winners & Losers

AIG shares rose after the insurer's CEO said he plans to stay at the company for two more years.

Author:: Robert Holmes
Publish date:: Apr 7, 2010 10:57 AM EDT

NEW YORK (

) --

American International Group

was among the winners of the financial sector Wednesday after the insurer's CEO said he plans to stay at the company for two more years.

AIG

rose nearly 1% after CEO Robert Benmosche said he expects to remain with the bailed-out insurer for another year or two and will help prepare AIG for his departure. Benmosche made the remarks in a telephone interview with

Bloomberg

Benmosche will "be around for a year or two more, and then after that the question would be working with the board on how best to deal with succession," he told

Bloomberg

. "We are doing that now, as well as in the future."

AIG shares were lately up 24 cents, or 0.7%, to $36.15.

KeyCorp

(KEY) - Get Report

was another top performer Wednesday after Goldman Sachs analyst Brian Foran upgraded the bank to buy from neutral and upped his price target to $10 from $7. Foran cited CD re-pricing, noting that KeyCorp has the biggest and most expensive CD book with about 2/3 of it re-pricing this year.

KeyCorp shares were jumping by 3.9% to $8.80.

Meanwhile, Goldman's Foran cited liquidity tailwinds for several estimate changes. Foran upped his 2010 and 2011 earnings targets for

Comerica

(CMA) - Get Report

Hudson City Bancorp

(HCBK)

First Horizon

(FHN) - Get Report

and

City National

(CYN)

Foran also raised stock price targets for

SunTrust Banks

(STI) - Get Report

Fifth Third Bancorp

(FITB) - Get Report

Huntington Bancshares

(HBAN) - Get Report

U.S. Bancorp

(USB) - Get Report

BB&T

(BBT) - Get Report

and

Regions Financial

(RF) - Get Report

, among other select banks.

Among other analyst moves, Rochdale Securities analyst Dick Bove initiated coverage of

UBS

(UBS) - Get Report

with a neutral rating and $18 price target. Bove says that UBS "is a great company with an excellent franchise that got itself into a surprising amount of trouble."

UBS was lately down 1.3% to $26.74.

Elsewhere,

Goldman Sachs

(GS) - Get Report

defended its business model and its actions ahead of the 2008 financial crisis in a letter to shareholders published Wednesday.

While the letter argues Goldman's "direct exposure to AIG was minimal," it acknowledges that "Goldman Sachs and every other financial institution and company benefitted from the continued viability of AIG." Addressing criticisms that Goldman bet against mortgage products it was selling, the letter states that Goldman was merely offsetting exposures and were not a "bet against our clients."

Goldman Sachs was rising 2.1% to $176.46.

Among other U.S. bank stocks,

Morgan Stanley

(MS) - Get Report

gained 2% to $29.94,

Bank of America

(BAC) - Get Report

advanced 1% to $18.68, and

Citigroup

rose 0.8% to $4.32.

On the downside,

JPMorgan Chase