18 August 2010

GM Said to Consider Sale of Preferred Stock With IPO

Bloomberg

General Motors Co. may sell preferred stock alongside its initial public offering of common shares, according to a draft of its regulatory filing and two people briefed on the plan.

GM would get proceeds from the preferred offering and will not sell shares itself in the common offering, according to the draft and the people, who declined to be identified because the filing hasn’t been publicly released. The Detroit-based automaker will seek to raise $12 billion to $16 billion in the IPO, a person familiar with the plan said last week.

The initial offering would be the second-largest in U.S. history, behind Visa Inc.’s $19.7 billion IPO in March 2008. Outgoing Chief Executive Officer Ed Whitacre has pushed to end government ownership of the company, which received a $50 billion taxpayer bailout following its bankruptcy in June 2009.

The U.S. Treasury will offer some of the common shares it holds in GM, according to the people, who verified details of the IPO registration draft that may be modified before its final version is filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission this week. The offering is code-named “Project Dawn,” according to the document.

Randy Arickx, a GM spokesman, declined to comment, as did Mark Paustenbach, a spokesman for the Treasury.

The preferred shares were added to attract hedge funds and other new investors because the shares have attributes of both debt and equity, the people familiar with the plans said.

NYSE, Toronto Exchange


The common shares will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange and the Toronto Stock Exchange, while the preferred stock would be listed on the NYSE, according to the draft and the people. The preferred shares will be convertible to common stock at a price that wasn’t specified and are contingent on the completion of the common share sale, according to the details in the draft confirmed by the people. The proceeds will be used for general corporate purposes.

GM aims to sell a fifth of the Treasury’s 304 million shares, two people familiar with the plan said in June. That would cut the government’s stake to less than 50 percent.

Whitacre, 68, said last week that he would step down as CEO Sept. 1 and as chairman at the end of the year, ceding both titles to Dan Akerson, a managing director of the Carlyle Group. Akerson, 61, has been on GM’s board since July 2009 and previously served as chairman and CEO of XO Communications, Nextel Communications and General Instrument Corp.

Underwriters

The Treasury, which retained veto power over GM on the selection of underwriters and fees, agreed to have JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley of New York lead the offering, people familiar have said, while other banks including Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. are also involved in the IPO.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. of New York didn’t get a top role even after offering to accept a fee of 0.75 percent, which was then imposed by the government on all underwriters, people familiar have said.

GM also has obtained a revolving line of credit worth as much as $5 billion from a group of at least 15 banks, including Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Citigroup, Bank of America and Zurich- based Credit Suisse Group AG, a person said last week.

The automaker may hold the offering in November, people familiar with the matter have said. The automaker also may sell stock owned by Canada and a union-led retiree health-care trust, a person familiar with the matter has said.

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