The US Treasury Department announced on Wednesday it will sell some Citigroup stocks it had obtained after rescuing the bank from near-bankruptcy in 2009. The treasury said it will sell an undisclosed number of its roughly 2.2 billion dollars-worth of trust preferred securities "for no less than par value."
"Any proceeds received from the sale will represent a net gain or profit to the taxpayer," it said in a statement. The US government intervened in 2009 to stop Citigroup, once the world's largest bank, from going under by agreeing to share losses on a pool of assets worth 301 billion dollars held by the bank.
The loss-sharing agreement ended in December 2009 at Citigroup's request, but the US government still holds roughly five billion dollars worth of common shares in the company, a 18 percent stake. Citi is still one of the last of the major banks operating in the shadow of a US government bailout.
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