Treasury readies Ally for IPO
Dakin Campbell and Rebecca Christie / Bloomberg News
Ally Financial Inc., the auto and home lender bailed out by the U.S., moved closer to regaining its independence as the government converted $5.5 billion of preferred stock into common shares.
The swap involves almost half the Treasury Department's preferred shares and boosts the U.S. taxpayers' stake to 74 percent of Ally's common shares from 56.3 percent, according to a statement Thursday.
The move, along with the sale of some trust preferred securities held by the U.S., is "designed to accelerate Treasury's ability to exit its investment," the department's statement said.
The government is looking to recover its $17.2 billion investment tied to Detroit-based Ally as Chief Executive Officer Michael Carpenter readies the company for an initial public offering.
Ally, formerly known as GMAC Inc., almost collapsed during the financial crisis.
"Ally has made substantial progress in restructuring its operations and improving its financial performance during 2010, and this transaction will position us to begin to exit the investment," said Tim Massad, Treasury's acting assistant secretary for financial stability.
Anyone else interested is seeing how quick Obama and his administration is trying to unravel OUR investment in these dogs? ? 2012 is getting closer and I am positive that they want to project him as a financial wiz.
What happen to GM? It stock needs to get to $ 50 for the taxpayers to break even.....
