Bailout

Chrysler and GM were prepping for bankruptcy; now, what does the future hold?

An an inside look at the almost-demise of the Big 3.

We curate the week's events with a focus on the auto bailout of 2008-09. Plus, news and analysis on the industry.

The final tally on the cost of the US auto industry bailout is in. With the recent sale of shares of Ally Financial, the Feds invested $79.69 billion to keep GM, Chrysler and their financing divisions afloat and recouped $70.43 billion – a net loss of $9.26 billion. However, in the government's official numbers it lost $16.56 billion because the smaller number factored in interest and dividend payments. The total was still far less red ink spilled than some estimates predicted.

The Autodromo Nazionale Monza has been a mainstay of Formula One since its inception, but if it doesn't get the funding it needs, it could find itself in serious trouble - and lose the Italian Grand Prix in the process.

The US Treasury will come out ahead on its bailout of Ally Financial, unloading its final shares for an estimated $1.25 billion and bringing its total profits on the Ally rescue to $18.3 billion on a $17.2 billion investment. That's a net win.

The Auditor General of Canada recently issued a report that makes at least one thing clear: it doesn't know how effective Canadian government loans given to General Motors and Chrysler in 2009 were in ensuring the viability of both companies. That year, the Canadian and Ontario governments dished out $10.8 billion CAD ($9.6B US) to GM and $2.9 billion CAD ($2.6B US) to Chrysler, but hadn't yet sorted

Apparently, the cost of the US Treasury's bailout of General Motors is still being calculated. A new report from the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which oversees the TARP initiative, found that the US government has lost more money on its investment than previously believed.

One would expect that as the CEO of one of the largest automakers in the world, the pay would be pretty darn competitive. And for the just-announced incoming CEO of General Motors, Mary Barra, the financial compensation package could well be substantially rosier than it was for her predecessor. That's because she'll

The U.S. government ended up losing $10.5 billion on the General Motors bailout, but it says the alternative would have been far worse.

According to a report from CNBC, the US government has sold off the last of its

When we last checked the status of the federal government's stake in General Motors in September, it owned about 7.3 percent - roughly 101-million shares worth about $3.7 billion - of the automaker. In October, the Fed sold almost a third of its remaining stake, or 29- to 30-million shares valued at about $1.2 billion, The Detroit News

Some things are never as they seem. That's especially true when talking about the bankruptcy of General Motors. From afar, it's easy to look at GM's issue being one of decades of mismanagement, poorly built cars, and a certain, too-big-to-fail mindset. But closer to the situation, as the Detroit-based company was well and truly spiraling out of control in 2009, there was much more

The US Treasury has announced a $9.7 billion loss on the $49.5 billion it used to bailout General Motors in 2009, according to a report from the The Detroit News, which in turn cites the quarterly report from the Special Inspector General of the Troubled Asset Relief Program<

Almost five years after US taxpayers bailed out General Motors and Chrysler, a large majority of their slimmed-down dealership networks are posting soaring profits, Bloomberg reports, and contributing to the US auto industry on track this year to deliver 15.4 million

PSA Peugeot-Citroën has been struggling to offer low finance rates to customers since its banking arm, Banque PSA Finance, had its credit score downgraded, which in turn has made it hard for the French carmaker to compete with brands that offer lower finance rates, such as Volkswagen. The French government recognized the catch-22 and, after negotiat

Special Inspector General Christy Romero has delivered another report to Congress on the state of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) up to June 6 of this year, assessing numbers to the US Treasury's remaining stake in General Motors. After stock sales in February and another Jonathon Ramsey

Tesla Motors announced Wednesday that it has paid off a $465 million U.S. Department of Energy loan in full with interest. In doing so, Tesla becomes the first U.S. automaker to completely repay loans distributed under the DOE's Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program.

Reuters reports that earlier this week the US Treasury announced the sale of another tranche of General Motors stock. It didn't say how many of the 241.7 million shares it holds in the automaker it would sell, nor exactly when – the discretion apparently intended to keep hedge funds from profiting from the situation. The government's ownership is broken down into common and diluted