GENERAL MOTORS will this week begin its return to public share ownership with an expected filing of paperwork for a stock offering, barely 13 months after exiting a government-bankrolled bankruptcy that all but wiped out its existing shareholders.
The registration statement, known as a Form S-1, will run into hundreds of pages, including a lengthy section on “risk factors” facing the Detroit carmaker.
It may be lodged with the US Securities and Exchange Commission today or tomorrow, according to people close to GM.
Last week’s unexpected announcement by Ed Whitacre, GM chief executive, that he would step aside in favour of Daniel Akerson , a former telecommunications boss and managing director of asset manager Carlyle, meant that the company had to rewrite portions of the S-1.
JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley are advising GM on its preparations for the offering, aimed at recouping some of the roughly $60 billion (€46.9 billion) that US and Canadian taxpayers put into rescuing the company since December 2008.
The US and Canadian governments hold about 72 per cent of GM’s equity. GM is not commenting on the size or other details of the planned offer.
In making its case to investors, GM will point to two successive quarterly profits and a new, lean structure that means it can remain profitable even at crisis-level US industry sales of just over 11 million vehicles.
Last week it reported a second-quarter net profit of $1.3 billion. In the US, GM now sells more vehicles under four brands than it did a year ago with eight.
The company was profitable in North America and emerging markets but is still losing money in Europe. The planned listing will come as car sales slow in both China and the US, its two biggest markets.
Quarter-on-quarter, GM lost market share in China, Brazil and India, three of the most hotly-contested growth markets for the US carmaker and its global competitors.
GM attributed the loss in China to slower sales of commercial vehicles. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010)
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