TOKYO - Troubled US insurance giant AIG may take its casualty insurance unit public, and sell a 20 percent stake, to raise billions of dollars to pay back public funds, a report said Thursday.

American International Group, taken over last year by the US government in a $170-billion rescue from the financial crisis, is considering listing AIU Holdings, AIU's vice-chairman Nicholas Walsh told the Nikkei economics daily.

"Because of what has happened to our parent company, we have to go on an independent track," Walsh told the Nikkei. "It would be reasonable to conclude that a US listing was probably the most likely outcome."

The Nikkei said the specific timing for the listing would be decided later.