Money managers have lost at least $5 billion in their stock portfolios since three insurers landed in Eliot Spitzer's hot seat.
Despite the losses, some value managers are bullish on insurance stocks.
Mr. Spitzer, New York's attorney general, announced Oct. 14 that he was bringing civil charges of bid rigging against Marsh & McLennan Cos. Inc. and American International Group. Eleven days later, he said he also uncovered wrongdoing at Aon Corp., but no civil charges have been brought against the firm as of late last week.
Mr. Spitzer accused each firm of allowing its brokers to present property and casualty insurance bids to its customers in order to divvy up the market and fix prices.
The top institutional shareholders of the three companies as of June 30, and their losses assuming they still own the stock, were:
• Fidelity Management & Research Corp., Boston, which held 146,251,457 shares of AIG. Fidelity saw the value of those shares plummet to about $8.95 billion on Oct. 28, from about $9.78 billion on Oct. 13, the eve of Mr. Spitzer's announcement of the investigations and civil charges.
• Capital Research & Management Co., Los Angeles, which held 83,201,104 shares of AIG and 27,267,500 of MMC, lost a total of about $750 million.
• T. Rowe Price Associates Inc., Baltimore, which owned 13,144,309 shares of MMC, has seen the value of those shares plummet to about $379 million from about $606 million on Oct. 13.
• NWQ Investment Management Co., Los Angeles, which held 21,492,234 shares of Aon, saw the value of those shares drop to about $454 million from about $589 million on Oct. 13
• Wellington Management Co., Boston, held 23,968,467 shares of MMC as of June 30. The value of those shares dropped to about $688 million from about $1.093 billion at the close of the trading day Oct. 13.
• State Street Corp., Boston, parent to passive index giant State Street Global Advisors, held 41,147,616 shares of MMC, 22,309,090 shares of Aon and 82,641,673 shares of AIG as of June 30. The drop in value of those shares between Oct. 13 and Oct. 28 totaled about $1.335 billion.
• Barclays Bank, London, parent to passive powerhouse Barclays Global Investors, San Francisco, held 92,767,354 shares of AIG, held 10,155,242 shares of Aon and 24,984,867 of MMC as of June 30. Between Oct. 13 and Oct. 28, the total value of the combined shares dropped by about $1.118 billion.
• Citigroup Inc., held 36,885,625 shares of AIG as of June 30. The total value of those shares dropped by about $209 million.
• Southeastern Asset Management held 46,208,400 shares of Aon as of June 30. The value of those shares plummeted by about $279 million.
• Pzena Asset Management, a concentrated value manager in New York that owns 8,451,000 shares of Aon, has seen the value of those shares drop by about $55 million.
The holdings data were taken from form 13F filings provided by ShareWatch Web, a service of Thomson Corp.