WASHINGTON – The U.S. Treasury may not have fully vetted the settlement of its interest in Chrysler Financial last year and not gotten a strong enough return for taxpayers, a bailout watchdog said in a report issued on Thursday.

The Treasury settled its interest in the former financial arm of the automaker for a loss in May last year, Reuters reported.

Private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management then became the sole owner and agreed in December to sell the the financing business for $6.3 billion to Toronto Dominion Bank, raising eyebrows over Treasury’s handling of the settlement.

Treasury may have “left money on the table” in its dealings with Cerberus, said former Delaware Senator Ted Kaufman, who headed the bipartisan Congressional Oversight Panel’s final report on the auto sector.

“The rush to exit Chrysler Financial compounded by incomplete due diligence may have resulted in an unnecessarily subpar return for taxpayers, preventing Treasury from recouping more of its prior $1.6 billion loss,” said the report.

The deal illustrated a broader finding of the panel: that the Obama administration may be too enamored of the politically appealing scenario of quickly cutting its stake in the auto business rather than patiently managing taxpayer interests.

“Treasury’s efforts have in some cases lacked transparency and accountability,” said Kaufman on a conference call with reporters.

Treasury disputed the findings, saying it had hired an independent financial adviser to assist in valuing Chrysler Financial and to check for other potential buyers. It said its exit was done responsibly.

The oversight panel was appointed by Congress to review bailouts under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Kaufman stressed that his group understood the administration faced tough decisions in orchestrating the bankruptcy overhaul General Motors Co and Chrysler in 2009. The panel said the government’s intervention was ambitious and the companies now “appear to be on a promising course.”

However, Kaufman said taxpayers will likely lose billions on now-public GM and with Chrysler, now under the management control of Italy’s Fiat.

Treasury has recovered about half of the $50 billion extended to GM in return for nearly 61 percent of the restructured company, and about $2.2 billion of the $12 billion given to Chrysler in exchange for a 10 percent interest.

Bill Visnic, senior editor of Edmunds AutoObserver.com, said the auto bailout was an attempt to prevent harm to the economy and should not be viewed as an investment.

“It had to be done,” Visnic said. “Anything you get back is a bonus.”

Treasury assumed 40 percent of Chrysler Financial’s equity as part of a $3.5 billion pre-bankruptcy loan extended in January 2009 to the lending unit’s parent, Chrysler Holding, which was owned at the time by Cerberus.

Treasury settled for $1.9 billion — a loss of $1.6 billion on the loan — in May 2010, transferring the Chrysler Financial stake to Cerberus, which became the sole owner ahead of the deal with Toronto Dominion Bank.

The panel found that Treasury officials apparently conducted “limited valuation due diligence, focusing on the merits of the offer from Cerberus,” the report said.

Treasury, the panel said, expected that Chrysler Financial would be wound down, which would limit its value. But Chrysler Financial continued investment in its business before finding a strategic partner in TD Bank.

Treasury responded saying it does not “engage in market timing.” The recovery, it said, was significantly more than expected.

Ron Bloom, the administration’s pointman on auto restructuring, said in Detroit this week that the bailouts prevented widespread economic hardship. He also said the agency is moving responsibly to exit the business and that turnarounds at GM and Chrysler have “yielded concrete returns remarkably quickly.”

NEW YORK – General Motors Co. executives will use some charter flights on trips over the next few weeks to meet with prospective investors in the automaker’s upcoming public stock offering, GM said.

GM, Chrysler and Ford Motor Co. sparked public outrage two years ago when executives flew to Washington on chartered jets to ask the federal government for a taxpayer-funded bailout, Reuters reported.

The congressional backlash was so severe that the executives later drove from Detroit for a follow-up hearing in hybrids, a move mocked on “Saturday Night Live.” Ford did not seek a bailout at the time but supported bailouts for its two U.S. competitors to ensure the supply chain would not collapse.

“GM’s corporate travel policy allows charter flights when supported by a business rationale,” GM spokesman Tom Wilkinson told The News York Times. “This is consistent with our requirements under TARP [the federal bailout terms] and our Treasury loan agreement, as our shareholders know.”

The U.S. Treasury Department, which controls the government’s 61 percent GM stake, declined to comment directly on the matter, according to The Times story.

“This is not an issue in which Treasury is in any way involved,” Mark Paustenbach, a Treasury spokesman, told the newspaper.

GM CEO Dan Akerson and several other executives are expected to begin meetings as early as today with potential investors in North America and Europe, according to The Times.

Typically, institutional investors expect face-to-face meetings with the management of companies trying to sell stock. Taking chartered flights ensures the executives will arrive on time for those meetings, also known as “road shows” in the investment world. But given that GM is controlled by taxpayer dollars, the issue has been discussed internally, a source familiar with the matter recently told Reuters.

“It’s fair to say GM is very concerned about appearing extravagant,” said the source. “Even though we always do this, because it’s the only way to really get a road show done properly in an amount of time that minimizes market risk for the seller, this one might be a special case.”

GM on Wednesday finalized terms for the stock offering of about $13 billion to partially repay the taxpayer-funded bailout and reduce the U.S. Treasury to a minority shareholder.

GM’s filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was the final step before it begins marketing what is expected to be one of the largest-ever initial public offerings. The investors are expected to span the globe and include sovereign wealth funds.

The automaker plans to sell 365 million common shares at $26 to $29 each, raising about $10 billion at the midpoint, according to the updated IPO papers filed with the SEC.

In addition, GM said it planned to sell about $3 billion of preferred shares that would convert to common shares under mandatory provisions, a less risky form of equity that could attract dividend and growth-fund investors.

The IPO would value GM at just over $41 billion at the midpoint of the price range. Assuming exercise of warrants that are in-the-money, the share count jumps roughly 300 million to 1.8 billion, and GM’s value rises to just under $49 billion.

If everything goes as planned, the offering would be the largest U.S. IPO since Visa Inc.’s $19.7 billion IPO in 2008.

GM’s underwriters could sell an additional 54.75 million common shares and 9 million preferred shares if the IPO attracts robust investor demand, raising another roughly $2 billion and potentially taking the total IPO amount to as much as $15.65 billion, the company said in the amended prospectus.

Once a blue-chip stock, GM is expected to return to the New York Stock Exchange under the “GM” ticker symbol as well as a listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange. GM is expected to price its IPO on Nov. 17 and begin trading on Nov. 18, sources said.

The governments of Canada and Ontario plan to sell down their combined stake to 9.64 percent from 11.67 percent and the UAW’s retiree health care trust fund is expected to reduce its stake to 15.33 percent from 19.93 percent.

GM plans to contribute $4 billion cash and $2 billion of common stock to its pensions after the IPO to address an area of investor concern.

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration’s top auto adviser today offered an optimistic outlook for taxpayers, anticipating the government would lose less than previously predicted on the $85 billion auto industry bailout, reported The Detroit News.

Weeks before General Motors Co. is set to launch a public offering, auto czar Ron Bloom strongly defended the government’s rescue of the auto industry.

The bailout of GM, Chrysler Group LLC and auto finance companies will be “at a cost that will almost certainly be a small faction of even the most optimistic predictions,” Bloom told an audience at George Washington University Law School today.

Earlier this month, the Treasury Department narrowed its predicted loss on the bailout to $17 billion, down from an initial projected loss of $44 billion in 2009. Bloom didn’t specify how he much he thought taxpayers might lose.

He praised the efforts that GM and Chrysler have made to date.

“The talented and energetic directors and management teams at GM and Chrysler in full partnership with the UAW have already made a huge amount of progress,” Bloom said.

Bloom, who is overseeing the government’s 61 percent stake in GM and will help decide how much the government will offer for sale, didn’t comment on the IPO.

Bloom, a former investment banker and adviser to the United Steelworkers union, offered an unstinting defense of the government’s auto bailout, saying the administration “had accomplished everything we set out to do.”

He said GM and Chrysler – and their unions – shared in the blame for the automakers’ near collapse in 2008.

“The companies and their unions cannot be absolved of all responsibility for their part in this great American tragedy,” Bloom said. “The companies allowed themselves to be lulled into a false sense of security and the unions went along for the ride,” he said.

Bloom said both sides weren’t facing the problems in the runup to the companies’ requests for bailouts.

“Neither party was willing to face the seismic economic shifts that were occurring all around them,” Bloom said.

But he said what finally turned around Detroit automakers was the threat of collapse.

“As Samuel Johnson famously said ‘Nothing focuses the mind like an imminent hanging.’ And GM and Chrysler could clearly see the noose,” Bloom said.

Bloom noted the auto rescue’s intense unpopularity – “everybody still thinks it was a bad idea” – but said they had saved GM and Chrysler because it was right.

“Over time – knock wood – people will appreciate that GM and Chrysler have in fact fundamentally changed and we’ve saved a million jobs,” Bloom said. “This will be recorded as an important moment when the government did the right thing.”

He also explained why he thought Ford Motor Co. didn’t need a federal bailout. He noted that Ford had borrowed $23.4 billion in late 2006 to guard against a rainy day – a move he partially attributed to good luck.

He said if GM and Chrysler had failed it would have forced Ford into bankruptcy because of the collapse of the supply base that all three companies use.

He said Ford is still doing better than its domestic rivals.

“(Ford) is a little bit further along. They got the memo a little sooner. They did have some luck. They’ve had a huge amount of hard work and they did it in the best way imaginable benefitting from what we did,” Bloom said, calling Ford “a spectacular company.”

In the end, the administration didn’t just save two auto companies – but a whole sector of the economy.

“The reality is we saved the automobile industry – and everbody who’s connected to that industry benefitted,” Bloom said.

DETROIT – General Motors Co. results “over the next several years” will determine how quickly the U.S. government bailout that saved it last year is paid back, GM CEO Dan Akerson said.

Paying back the government all at once would be “unrealistic,” Akerson told Reuters and other reporters in a meeting at GM headquarters in downtown Detroit.

Akerson, who was named as GM’s fourth CEO in an 18-month period during a shake-up in August, said he was not contemplating more management changes at the automaker.

GM filed plans for a public stock offering within a week of the announcement that Akerson would replace CEO Ed Whitacre at the top of the company. Akerson became CEO on September 1, and is expected to become chairman at year’s end.

Akerson declined to discuss the IPO.

Akerson was named to GM’s board in July 2009 after the automaker emerged from a government-funded bankruptcy that left the Treasury holding a nearly 61 percent stake.

The IPO, which is expected in November, would allow the government to begin to shed its stake and for GM to move away from its “government motors” image.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama acknowledged the government’s $85 billion auto industry bailout had angered some Americans.

In a wide-ranging speech on the economy today, Obama said the government’s rescue of General Motors Co., Chrysler Group LLC and their finance arms — along with dozens of major financial institutions — had been deeply unpopular, reported The Detroit News.

“Some of the very steps that were necessary to save the economy — like temporarily supporting the banks and the auto industry — fed the perception that Washington is still ignoring the middle class in favor of special interests,” Obama told a crowd in Cleveland. “And so people are frustrated and angry and anxious about the future.”

Over the last six weeks, Obama has repeatedly touted the success of GM and Chrysler and the saving of more than 1 million jobs in rescuing both companies from collapse and putting them through bankruptcy last year.

Late last month, Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, D-Ariz., sharply criticized GM and another bailout recipient, AIG, and reiterated that Congress should never have approved funding to allow the automaker to win a bailout.

“They may be celebrating in GM and AIG’s boardrooms, but the taxpayers don’t have much to be happy about. We still have tens of billions of dollars at stake in these companies, and we are still months or years away from getting our money back,” Kirkpatrick said. “This is a perfect example of why government shouldn’t be bailing out corporations.”

Obama also reiterated his push to keep green jobs in the United States.

“We see a future where we invest in American innovation and American ingenuity; where we export more goods so we create more jobs here at home; where we make it easier to start a business or patent an invention; where we build a homegrown, clean energy industry — because I don’t want to see new solar panels or electric cars or advanced batteries manufactured in Europe or Asia,” Obama said, according to a copy of his prepared remarks made available by the White House. “I want to see them made right here in America, by American workers.”

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration vetoed attempts by General Motors to abandon its Detroit headquarters, a new book by a former top auto adviser reveals.

The revelation comes in a 320-page memoir by Steven Rattner, who was President Barack Obama’s auto adviser for six months last year, and helped shepherd the $85 billion government bailout and bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler, The Detroit News reported.

“Overhaul: An Insider’s Account of the Obama Administration’s Emergency Rescue of the Auto Industry” also discloses Rattner secretly forced out GM Chairman Kent Kresa in June 2009, and offered GM’s top job to Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn.

The book paints a critical portrait of Chrysler Group LLC CEO Sergio Marchionne, other top executives and many in the government.

A draft manuscript was made available to The Detroit News by publisher Houghton Mifflin ahead of its Oct. 14 publication date.

Written with the help of a veteran auto journalist, Jeffrey McCracken, and Sadiq Malik, a former auto task force staffer, Rattner’s memoir offers new evidence that the Obama administration’s influence on the Detroit automakers was larger than previously revealed.

In addition to the government’s role in personnel matters, and in keeping GM in Detroit, the book discloses the White House initially planned for a $100 billion bailout, but the aid package GM, Chrysler and their affiliated finance companies eventually came in at $85 billion.

The administration also considered a $10 billion fund to help auto suppliers — but cut it to $5 billion — and weighed but discarded a plan to provide funding to help suppliers go through bankruptcies.

Before his ouster as GM’s CEO, Fritz Henderson proposed moving GM headquarters from Detroit’s Renaissance Center to the automaker’s Tech Center in Warren, arguing it would save money, and symbolize a commitment by the company’s leadership to be more hands-on managers.

Rattner praised the idea. But a White House aide, Brian Deese, who has been heavily involved in auto policy, denounced it.

“Are you out of your mind?” Rattner quoted Deese as saying. “Think what it would do to Detroit.”

Henderson proposed donating the iconic headquarters on the Detroit River to the city. Detroit received $20 million in tax revenue from GM.

The White House even commissioned an outside analysis of the impact a move would have on Detroit property values, Rattner wrote. The answer: an estimated “double-digit hit on already deflated real estate prices.”

Leaving the RenCen “made a lot of strategic sense,” Rattner wrote. But Michigan native Gene Sperling, a U.S. Treasury Department official, was one of many who fought the idea.

“It’s over for Detroit if you do this,” Sperling yelled in a meeting, Rattner recalled. “Don’t do this to (Detroit Mayor) Dave Bing… He’s a good man trying to do a good thing.”

The request was passed up the chain to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, “and word came down that the move would be a bridge too far,” Rattner wrote.

“Fortunately, this unique intervention into a specific GM matter was never leaked to the press, saving us from having to explain how it comported with our policy of letting GM and Chrysler manage their own affairs.”

In a Detroit News interview earlier this year, Henderson confirmed his interest in moving GM headquarters, but White House involvement has never been publicly reported.

Neither the White House nor GM would comment on Rattner’s account.

“The book is history,” said GM spokesman Greg Martin. “We’re a new company and we have too much work to do and no time for book reviews.”