AIG Leads `Unlucky 13' Stocks to $1 Trillion Loss

[Purveyor]

By David Wilson

Sept. 17 (Bloomberg) -- American International Group Inc. and a dozen more U.S. companies have collectively lost the equivalent of Switzerland's stock-market value so far this year.

The CHART OF THE DAY shows the declining fortunes of the ``unlucky 13,'' as described by Howard Silverblatt, an analyst at Standard & Poor's in New York. Members of this group have had the biggest declines in value among S&P 500 companies.

Their capitalization tumbled by about $1 trillion through yesterday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The figure exceeds the $988 billion value of the Swiss market, among the world's 10 largest by this gauge.

``The takeaway is that we are in a crisis,'' Silverblatt wrote yesterday in an e-mail. ``The current situation looks like nothing I've ever experienced,'' including the inflation-driven losses of the mid-1970s, the crash of 1987 and the 2000-2002 bear market.

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