Looks like more good news, adjusting the forecasts for Kevin Page, the
naysayers including yours truly.
The company has received a total of $52 billion in U.S. government aid, with the $6.7 billion considered a loan. The rest would be repaid when the company sells stock to the public, perhaps later this year.
Once the loans are paid back, GM would still owe $45.3 billion to the government. That will be repaid with the stock offering, which GM Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said would take place "when the markets and the company are ready."
Liddell said earlier this month that GM could report a profit as early as this year. GM said it lost $3.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009 on revenues of $32.3 billion.
The U.S. government owns about 61 percent of the Detroit automaker, which came in exchange for the aid.
It also will repay early the $1.4 billion borrowed from the Canadian and Ontario governments, the person said. The company already has repaid $384 million. Michigan Auto
2010 Camaro photo video included:
here.
2 comments:
GM will surely benefit from the hit taken by the Toyota brand.
More bailout requests are coming; we'll never see a dime:
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/04/gm-more-troubles-coming-down-the-road/38603/
Key points
GAO notes the complicated role played by the federal government, which guaranteed those pensions and now owns GM and Chrysler. GM and Chrysler bought union peace by overpromising pension benefits, knowing that the taxpayers stood behind those promises. Now what should the government do, take it out on the auto workers or hit the taxpayers to benefit the auto workers? Your elected officials will have little difficulty making this decision, invariably hitting future taxpayers to benefit favored constituents, like the auto workers.
and
Of course, you have to dig into the numbers to find the bad news, like the $56.4b in "cost of sales," or the $700m interest cost, or the 48 percent North American capacity utilization in 2009, or the 16.3 percent US car market share.
Make no mistake, these companies are still on life support. The CBO expects that the lion's share of the government's losses on TARP will come, not from anything the Bush administration did, but from the Obama administration's decision to bail out the automakers and to a lesser extent, its bailout of homeowners. It seems that a big chunk of our cost may come from picking up the gold plated pensions . . . "Cadillac Plans", if you will . . . of the automakers. And lest you think I'm picking on unions over management, it was management that used the UAW as a prop to extract these gargantuan sums from the pockets of innocent taxpayers.
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