After paying back its $182 billion bailout, the American International Group is now considering whether to sue the government agencies that rescued it during the financial crisis. A.I.G.’s board is meeting on Wednesday to weigh joining a $25 billion lawsuit filed by Maurice R. Greenberg, the company’s former chief executive, claiming that the bailout cheated shareholders, DealBook’s Ben Protess and Michael J. de la Merced report. The board members owe a duty to shareholders to consider the lawsuit, which could put the company in line for a potential payout. The lawsuit does not argue that the government’s help was not needed, but rather claims that the onerous nature of the rescue “deprived shareholders of tens of billions of dollars and violated the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits the taking of private property for ‘public use, without just compensation,’” DealBook writes. And yet, joining the legal challenge “would almost certainly be widely seen as an audacious display of ingratitude. The action would also threaten to inflame tensions in Washington, where the company has become a byword for excessive risk-taking on Wall Street. Some government officials are already upset with the company for even seriously entertaining the lawsuit, people briefed on the matter said.” Still, Mr. Greenberg argues that the bailout extracted a “punitive” interest rate and diluted the holdings of shareholders like Starr International, Mr. Greenberg’s company, which at the time was the insurer’s biggest investor. “The government has been saying, ‘We’re your friend, we owned and controlled you and we let you go.’ But A.I.G. doesn’t owe loyalty to the government,” a person close to Mr. Greenberg said. “It owes loyalty to its shareholders.”

BANK OF AMERICA CONTINUES SHIFT FROM MORTGAGES | Bank of America continued a retreat from the home mortgage market on Monday, when it sold off about 20 percent of its loan servicing business. The deal, part of Bank of America’s agreement’s to pay Fannie Mae more than $11 billion to settle a fight over bad mortgages, concentrates power in the hands of the bank’s big rivals and could be bad for consumers, Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Peter Eavis report in DealBook. Bank of America’s legal woes have cut down its mortgage ambitions. The lender now accounts for 4 percent of the national mortgage market, down from about 20 percent in 2009, leading to reduced competition and potentially higher borrowing costs. The settlement announced on Monday, stemming from Bank of America’s disastrous acquisition of Countrywide Financial in 2008, resolves claims that the company sold troubled mortgages to the government, saddling Fannie Mae with big losses. Separately on Monday, Bank of America and nine other lenders agreed to an $8.5 billion settlement with banking regulators to resolve claims of foreclosure abuses. That deal, intended to end a troubled foreclosure review of millions of loan files that was mandated by banking regulators, will provide $3.3 billion in cash relief to borrowers who went through foreclosure in 2009 and 2010, and $5.2 billion to homeowners in danger of losing their homes. Together, the two agreements on Monday “represented one of the biggest single days for government settlements with United States banks, totaling $20.15 billion.”

SEARS CHAIRMAN TO BECOME CHIEF EXECUTIVE | The hedge fund manager Edward S. Lampert, who is the chairman of Sears Holdings, is set to become the company’s chief executive, giving him an even more hands-on role. He will succeed Louis J. D’Ambrosio, who is leaving in February because of family health matters, the company said on Monday. Mr. Lampert, who engineered the 2005 merger of Sear and Kmart, “faces a tough job,” DealBook writes. “When he brought Sears and Kmart under one roof, he vowed to shake up the retail world. But the company’s financial performance has been weak.”

REGULATORS ACKNOWLEDGING REALITY | When global regulators decided over the weekend to relax the requirements for bank liquidity, the move was seen by many as a huge giveaway. “But this is a knee-jerk response,” Andrew Ross Sorkin writes in the DealBook column. “In truth, the reason that regulators ultimately chose to relax the rules was simple practicality: many banks in Europe and some in the United States would have never been able to meet the requirements without significantly reducing the amount of credit they were to extend to Main Street over the next two years, according to people involved in the Basel decision process.” “That’s the other side of the regulatory coin that Main Street often forgets about. At the time that the original rules were written in 2010, the consensus among economists was that the global economy would be in much better shape today than it is.”

ON THE AGENDA | Monsanto reports earnings before the market opens, and Alcoa reports results Tuesday evening. Barry Silbert, chief executive of SecondMarket, is on CNBC at 11:40 a.m. Thomas Lee, JPMorgan’s chief United States equity strategist, is on Bloomberg TV at 3 p.m. Jeffrey Lacker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, speaks in Columbia, S.C., at 1:30 p.m. Data on consumer credit for November are out at 3 p.m.