Three deals announced over the past three days show that troubled western financial firms are disposing of profitable and well performing emerging market assets, as they seek to shore up their still underperforming balance sheets at home. And however circuitously, that could mean better deals abroad for clients.

The reported sale of AIG's Asian insurance unit AIA to Prudential is the biggest of the three at potentially $35 billion. AIA is the crown jewel of what is left of AIG and the unit has been primed for sale since the day after it was bailed out by the US government. AIA is actually the forefather of AIG: the company was established in Shanghai after the Second World War before setting up AIG in the US. It is now the only pan-Asian insurance company and as such is clearly a trophy asset for any acquirer, reflected in the huge price tag.

GE Money also announced that it was selling two well-performing businesses, firstly its 20 percent stake in Turkey's Garanti Bank for $3.3 billion to an as yet unknown buyer, and a $1 billion consumer finance business in Hong Kong to Standard Chartered. These deals again show a troubled US company having to offload well-performing and growing business in emerging markets a long way from home.

In analyzing what these deals might mean for CFOs, a very interesting analysis came in this weekend's Economist magazine, which looked at the losses that RBS incurred as a result of buying ABN Amro. Essentially it revealed that ABN Amro took on most of its current loss making assets in the year that it was being stalked by Barclays, RBS, Fortis and Santander. The message CFOs might take from this is that while a bank is being sold, it actually increases its risk taking as it seeks to maximize its book value prior to the eventual sale. This is useful knowledge for any CFO seeking financing.

While there is no suggestion that either GE or AIG have been reckless in their emerging market activities over the past year, the fact that these deals come about now show the great Western pull back to home markets is under way. With state support coming to end, these banks and financial companies will have to stand on their own feet and that means focusing entirely on their home markets. But counter-intuitively, this might mean that clients of those businesses in the emerging markets might get a few months where it is in both parties interests to bulk up on finance

The first rule of trading is to run your profits and cut your losses, and as such, these asset sales don't make much economic sense. In that kind of environment a call to your relationship banker could yield interesting results.