GM- Government Motors
GM, otherwise known as Government Motors, is set for an IPO (initial public offering) next week. If you don’t know about IPO’s check out this post for a primer!
(by yotut)
Now those of you living overseas-may not be aware that the US of A (you and me) has a 50 billion dollar stake in the company!
There is some debate about whether the IPO is a good investment, but you and I will never get the chance to put our money at risk.
It really gripes me that:
- The “public” owns a large portion of the company
- The Obama administration has been anti-big-business this election year-calling corporations and hedge-funds evil
- The unions got a sweetheart deal in the negotiations to save the company, for obvious reasons!
But the general investor, the average US citizen, AKA you and me, are completely shut out of the IPO process! Now I realize most IPO’s follow the same formula, the big boys get first dibs-this ain’t my first rodeo.
But I would think that with the taxpayers holding a large stake in this company, efforts would be made to give “the little guy” the administration talks about wanting to help so much-a chance at this investment.
This would be a perfect time to show it!!!
Institutional Investors and GM IPO Shares
But NOOOOO, the only people being offered shares are big institutional investors and investment banks-with less than 20% going to “the general investor” and you can bet that is only to the biggest customers of the biggest brokerages!!!
And the latest news is that China and Qatar, among other foreign countries are being offered a large stake in the company.
What other option is there?
What about a Dutch Auction a la Google in 2004. That seemed to work pretty well, and gave the average person a chance to get the stock at the IPO price.
I am not a conspiracy theorist, and am all in favor of big and small being able to make a buck-but a level playing field on occasion would be nice….
Reader Question:
What say you, are you happy that your taxes are being used to make the big players of the world more money?
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Tags: getting shares of IPO's, GM IPO, investing in IPO's, what is an IPO
Am I upset? No. Would it have been nice to give the common citizen a chance to lose money personally? Probably.
In this case, I think the more of this company we can unload onto the Chinese and institutional investors, the better for us, the public. Remember all the investment the Japanese did in the 80′s? Watch the same thing happen to the Chinese in the 2010′s. See the latest issue of The Economist. You could easily re-date the magazine back to 1986 and change China to Japan.
Great point Bog, it will be interesting to see how far the Chinese get with their efforts. You think we will be able to buy a lot of these companies later from the Chinese at fire-sale prices?
Probably burns for all of the original investors and creditors of GM who got burned by the government takeover. Re: The Chinese, maybe Robert has a point. Could be that the Chinese are the ones that get suckered into parting with valuable money for a not-so-valuable company.
I think everyone should make their own decision re investing in the company. Just would be nice for the little guy to at least have an opportunity, to say yea or nea!
I agree, Dr. Dean. We, the taxpayers who own this company, should have opportunity to invest in GM. However, I am personally opting to increase my investment in Ford because of GM.
I took a chance on Ford at 2.96/share when it refused government funds. I’m hoping all the controversy over GM will boost Ford stock.
You go girl. I do think Ford will benefit from all the focus on car companies in the USA. And I think the GM stock will be a good investment over the long term. But probably wouldn’t buy it, if you don’t get the IPO price until the dust settles….And it doesn’t look like the average Joe or Jane will get that opportunity…