JPM Sells Warrants This Week...Maybe For WMI.....
US Treasury to sell warrants to buy JPMorgan stockBY Reuters
— 4:25 PM ET 12/08/2009
WASHINGTON, Dec 8 (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury Department said on Tuesday it will auction off warrants to buy stock in JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM
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) later this week.
The Treasury said the auction of warrants, which it received in return for pumping taxpayer capital into the company, would be on Thursday, with Deutsche Bank Securities as the sole book-running manager.
Ramirez & Co., The Williams Capital Group and Utendahl Capital Group will co-manage the offering, it said.
The Treasury said bidders would be able to place bids at any price in increments of $0.25 at or above the minimum bid price of $8.00 per warrant. Further details would be provided in a preliminary prospectus to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, it said.
The Treasury had announced on Nov. 19 that it would auction off the warrants it had received in JPMorgan, Capital One Financial Corp and TCF Financial Corp because it was unable to reach an agreement over their value with the institutions.
The 10-year warrants were meant to allow taxpayers to share the upside as banks that received public funds recover. All three of the banks have already repurchased preferred stock they had issued the Treasury.
"The proceeds of this sale will provide an additional return to the American taxpayer from Treasury's investment in the company beyond the dividend payments it received on the related preferred stock," the Treasury said.
JPMorgan, seeking to extricate itself from the government's bailout program, had said in July that the Treasury was demanding too high a price for the warrants and that it wanted them auctioned off. (Reporting by Tim Ahmann; Editing by Dan Grebler)
