Taxpayers’ loss on GM bailout looks to be about $10 billion

Taxpayers’ loss on GM bailout looks to be about $10 billion

By Jerry Hirsch
June 7, 2013

The U.S. Treasury’s deal to sell 30 million shares of General Motors Co. will recoup taxpayers another $1 billion of the bailout money the government put into the automaker back in 2009.

All told, taxpayers have recovered $32.5 billion of the $49.5 billion used to restructure the nation’s biggest automaker. The government also still owns 189 million GM shares, worth about $6.5 billion at the $34.41 share price that the Treasury got for the batch of stock it sold this week.

If the Treasury is able to liquidate its remaining stock, as it plans to do over the next 15 months, at that price or above, the government will still be short about $10 billion on its GM investment.