UBS on Monday announced it would buy the commodity index business of AIG, the struggling US insurer, after it spent the past two months divesting non-core commodities activities. The Swiss banking group said it would pay $15m to AIG Financial Products for the business, including rights to the popular DJ-AIG commodity index. The index is one of the two leading commodity indices of its kind, after the S&P GSCI, and is popular among passive investors, such as pension funds, who bet on rising commodity prices. Although the initial sum is modest, UBS said it could make additional payments of up to $135m on the purchase over the following 18 months, based on future profits of the activities being acquired.

This entry was posted by Gwen Robinson on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 5:42 and is filed under Capital markets, M&A. Tagged with aig, ubs. Edit this entry.