U.S. Government Sells Remaining General Motors Stock
It’s official: the United States government has sold off its remaining $49.5 billion investment in General Motors.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced that of the aforementioned investment — made during the fallout of the Great Recession — $39 billion came back to the government’s coffers while the taxpayer lost $10.5 billion on the deal. The government originally received 912 million shares — or 60.8 percent total ownership — in exchange for saving the automaker from certain doom in 2008. Once the company regained its footing in November 2010, the government began selling shares in a divestiture that lasted until this afternoon, when only 2 percent remained of GM remained in the federal investment portfolio.
On the other side, GM’s stock rose to $41.17 during regular trading hours, the highest peak the stock has seen since their IPO debuted in 2010. The automaker currently sits upon a nest egg of $26.8 billion in cash, and is considering bringing back dividends to their stockholders. Most of the nest egg was built during 15 consecutive months of profitability based on the strength of their brand and rising sales in North America and China.
Photo credit: Ray Dumas/ Flickr/ CC BY-SA 2.0
Seattle-based writer, blogger, and photographer for many a publication. Born in Louisville. Raised in Kansas. Where I lay my head is home.
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Not quite what I wanted, but better than I expected.
I'm happy to see the government out of the business of being a stockowner, but without commitments to not save the "too big to fail" socialists, how will banks, automakers and any other industry that spends large sums of money lobbying not expect to bailed out again?
Oh well, we'll just print out the difference. What could go wrong?
This is second only to the bank bailout in the biggest taxpayer ripoffs in history. This was payola to the unions, just like the bank bailout was payola to Wall Street. GM was losing money BEFORE the economy crashed. That speaks volumes about the contempt GM historically demonstrated to its customers and the gross incompetence of the company. We would ALL be better off if the two worst car companies that do business in North America - GM and Chrysler - went extinct. their few good products would have been bought up by one of the survivors, and their standard scheisse-mobiles would have gone to hell,where they belonged, without ripping off taxpayers and secured creditors.