Prudential, in the end, was hoist by its own petard. The more it talked up AIA, the more attractive the asset seemed to everybody else. AIG's decision to turn down the Pru's proposal to pay 14 per cent less for its main Asian unit, “after careful consideration”, must mean the group has assurances from sovereign wealth funds such as Singapore's Temasek and China Investment Corporation, and perhaps strategic investors such as China Life and Ping An, that there is strong appetite for a reversion to plan A: an initial public offering in Hong Kong. In iffy markets, it is usually the mid-sized offerings that suffer, not the mega-deals such as AIA.

Still, AIG – almost 80 per cent owned by the US government – is living dangerously. The group's credit default swap curve shifted down one-fifth, or about 100 basis points, at the moment the deal with Prudential was announced on March 1; yesterday it crept back up 20bp, according to Markit. Rejecting a $30.38bn offer, three-quarters of it in cash, is an implicit guarantee to the American taxpayer that it will match that – minus the $225m break fee – and then some.

Hong Kong has never absorbed an IPO worth more than $16bn (the H-share tranche of ICBC, in October 2006). An introductory sale of 45 per cent for $14bn, say, would value AIA at $31.1bn, equivalent to 1.5 times the unit's disclosed embedded value – not absurdly out of line with Korea's Samsung Life, which has traded comfortably after a debut last month at 1.3 times EV. More chunks could then follow, with the scarcity premium falling each time. Before AIG shooed away the Pru, Tim Geithner, Treasury secretary, said he did not want the US to own private companies for “a day longer than necessary”. Get used to waiting.