Thursday, March 25, 2010

High Praise for Bloomberg's Citigroup Story (C)

Two outposts of Dow Jones' far-flung blog empire referenced the story on the Treasury's plan to sell their (our) Citigroup shares with Barron's Stocks to Watch Today using the word "scoop".
Here's MarketBeat:
Citigroup shares are looking especially frisky this morning, as Bloomberg reports that the U.S. Treasury “intends to unload its 27 percent stake in bailed-out bank Citigroup Inc. using a preset trading plan that will lock the government into a schedule for selling its shares, people with direct knowledge of the matter said.”>>>MORE
And Barron's:

Well, here’s an Inside Scoop: The U.S. Treasury may decide to sell the 7.7 billion shares of Citigroup (C) it holds through a 10b5-1 plan of timed placements, according to Bloomberg’s Robert Schmidt and Bradley Keoun, citing people “with direct knowledge of the matter.”

The issue of how the Government will get out of the stock without upsetting the price of shares given the large supply its bringing to market — almost 30% of all shares outstanding — has been kicking around of late.

The 10b5-1 plan, which is often used by corporate executives to unload shares without distressing the stock,

“The Treasury would be able to issue instructions on how many shares to sell, when to sell them and at what price while eliminating concern that the sales are based on non-public information,” the authors write....MORE