Treasury moves to sell government stake in GM

NEW YORK The U.S. Treasury Department says it has come up with a plan on how it will sell the remaining 300.1 million shares of stock the government owns in General Motors (GM). The process is expected to bring an end to nearly four years of partial nationalization of the American automaker.

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Treasury said in a statement on Friday that subject to market conditions, it intends to fully exit the government's remaining investment in the GM over the next 12 to 15 months.

"Treasury's sale of its GM common stock is part of its continuing efforts to wind down the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)," said Treasury. "To date, Treasury has already recovered nearly 93 percent ($387 billion) of the funds disbursed through TARP ($418 billion)."

Even with a successful sale of the last of the government's GM stock, taxpayers will likely lose billions on their $49.5 billion bailout of the automaker in 2009.

The plan to sell the remaining General Motors stake would be implemented by JPMorgan Securities (JPM) and Citigroup Global Markets (C).

The banks will get one cent for every share they sell for a fee of up to $3 million.