General Motors has won praise from a senior US politician in Brussels as US Treasury officials say they will sell 30m of the automaker’s shares worth around US$1.03bn.
The American government has been slowly recouping investments made through the country’s Troubled Asset Relief Programme (TARP) that saw nearly US$420bn made available during the economic crisis some years ago.
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In December last year, the automaker repurchased 200m shares from the US Treasury, which announced it would sell its remaining 300m shares to the market. Some 189.2m shares are still in Treasury hands.
GM won plaudits from US Ambassador to the European Union, William Kennard, who was speaking at yesterday’s (6 June) European Industrial Policy conference in Brussels.
“I am just glad to see more American companies becoming more competitive internationally,” Ambassador Kennard told just-auto on the sidelines of the conference.
“GM is remarkable. It is not just a story about government support.”
The US Treasury’s sale of its GM common stock is part of its continuing efforts to wind down TARP. At the end of this particular sale, taxpayers will have recovered US$32.53bn of the initial GM investment.
To date, including the anticipated proceeds from this offering, the US Treasury has collected more than 95% or US$399.4bn of the funds made through TARP that totalled US$419.97bn.
Kennard also highlighted US-EU trade negotiations in the form of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership or ‘TTIP’ designed to boost both blocks’ economies.
“We have a window to do something very significant here,” he said. “We will be able to see in the next few years two very large pillars of trade in the Atlantic and Pacific.
“There is increasing recognition the US and Europe have much more to gain by co-operating rather than competing.”
