As General Motors Co. gears up to pitch its initial public offering to investors this fall, one of the tougher tasks it faces is making the case that its Opel operations in Europe can be fixed, The Wall Street Journal reported.

While the U.S. auto maker has reported two consecutive quarters of profit since emerging from bankruptcy last year, its Opel/Vauxhall unit—the backbone of GM’s European operations—continues to lose money and remains caught between high production costs and a brand image badly bruised by nearly two years of financial uncertainty.

Opel’s market share keeps sliding in an already declining European car market, adding to pressure on GM and Opel’s management to show would-be investors that it has an effective turnaround strategy for Europe in place.

Opel’s chief executive, Nick Reilly, said the carmaker is sticking to its plan to break even by 2011 and to return to profitability by 2012, and may even do so ahead of schedule should European car sales rebound more quickly than expected.

“Of course I am ambitious and want to do better than what is planned,” he said, adding that “GM’s new management is supporting us.”

In the second quarter, GM Europe, which also includes the European business of Chevrolet and other GM brands, narrowed its loss to $200 million after posting a $500 million deficit in the year’s first quarter. Still, that equaled a loss of $483 on each vehicle the European arm sold. GM itself posted a second-quarter profit of $1.3 billion, its best quarterly result in six years.

The biggest trouble spot is Germany, Opel’s home base and largest market. Car registration figures released last week show new registrations for Opels in Germany have fallen 39% through August of this year.

While total German car sales are down by more than a quarter this year—the hangover effect of the country’s hefty 2009 scrappage subsidies—Opel’s drop is the steepest of any domestic manufacturer. It comes despite the recent launch of a new version of one of Opel’s best sellers, the five-door Astra hatchback.

As a result, its German market share has slipped to 7.7 percent from 9 percent in 2009. Across Western Europe, Opel’s share fell to 7 percent through the year’s first half, down from 7.4 percent last year, according to the ACEA European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association.

“They’re going to have a hard time in [stock promotion] road shows in discussing why, when they were divesting as much as they could, they didn’t sell Opel,” said Scott Sweet, senior managing partner of IPO Boutique, a Tampa, Fla., IPO advisory firm.

GM last November decided at the 11th hour to pull out of a deal, crafted under pressure from the German government, to sell Opel to a Canadian-Russian consortium. Daniel Akerson, GM’s new chief executive, had a central role in the move to abandon the sale as he and other board members concluded Opel played too critical a role as GM’s beachhead in Europe and a key center of its engineering know-how, particularly in small and compact and cars, to let it go.

Most analysts agree with that assessment but say Opel faces a daunting battle in returning to sustainable profitability.

Even in the midst of a broad restructuring that involves shedding 8,000 jobs, all but one of Opel’s 13 plants will stay open and most of its production will remain concentrated in relatively high-cost Western Europe.

Despite plans to move into new markets such as China and Israel, the auto maker said it would take considerable time to build a substantial presence outside Europe.

And Opel lacks the image or products to command higher prices charged by rivals such as BMW AG to help boost its profit margins, said Jürgen Pieper, an auto analyst at Bankhaus Metzler in Frankfurt.

“There are only so many ways for a company like Opel [to improve profitability] and none are readily available,” the analyst said. “In a European market on the upswing they can probably make a small profit, but every four or five years they will be facing the same tough questions again.”

Analysts and dealers say Opel’s most pressing problem is restoring its image, particularly in Germany, where it has been battered by months of questions over its survival, ownership and financing for its turnaround.

In June, GM announced it would fund Opel’s €3.3 billion ($4.3 billion) restructuring on its own, but not before months of delays and, ultimately, rejection by the German government of the car maker’s appeal for more than €1 billion in state aid.

“After so much uncertainty for so long, naturally a lot of customers stayed away,” said Thomas Bieling, who co-heads the German association of Opel dealers.

To lure back customers and motivate dealers, Opel is investing in new models, including a smaller city car expected to be launched in 2013. And it’s banking on its Ampera extended-range electric car, a European cousin to the Chevrolet Volt, which is due out in late 2011.

Opel also recently unveiled a “lifetime” car warranty, which effectively is limited to 160,000 kilometers (99,424 miles), though with no time restrictions. That attracted the ire of a nongovernmental competition watchdog, which last week sued Opel for what it called misleading advertising. Bieling, though, said the guarantee has been popular with dealers and buyers.

Reilly said the company has no plans to change the guarantee campaign. “But of course the competition doesn’t like the campaign at all,” he said.

NEW YORK – The U.S. government is likely to take a loss on General Motors Co. in the first offering of the automaker’s stock, six people familiar with preparations for the landmark IPO told Reuters.

Subsequent offerings of the government’s holdings may be profitable depending on how investors trade the newly listed stock, the sources said.

But the question of whether taxpayers are ultimately made whole on GM’s $50 billion bailout could be left open for years, the people said.

It could take more than three years for the Treasury to sell down its remaining stake in GM after the IPO, one person said. That would push a final accounting into the next presidential term.

A decision to price the initial GM shares below the cost to taxpayers would follow the usual Wall Street practice of giving the first investors in a new stock a discount, but it could also help allay investor concern in the face of the slow recovery of the U.S. economy and flat auto sales.

Preparations for GM’s IP0 remain confidential. Both GM and the U.S. Treasury have declined to comment, citing restrictions by U.S. securities regulators.

The Obama administration has pledged to exit its investment in GM as quickly as possible while holding out the prospect that taxpayers could ultimately be paid back in full.

Treasury spokesman Mark Paustenbach declined to comment. GM spokesman Tom Wilkinson also declined to comment.

GM plans to begin a roadshow for its IPO immediately after the November 2 U.S. midterm congressional elections, paving the way for a stock debut on November 18, sources have said.

GM in August filed paperwork for an IPO that could potentially be worth as much as $20 billion, making it one of the biggest IPOs of all time.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is now reviewing the automaker’s S-1 filing.

Analysts and potential investors have projected a market value for GM of between $50 billion to around $90 billion, based on projections for the automaker’s cash flow, comparisons with rival Ford Motor Co and trading in bonds in the old GM which are convertible into shares in the new company.

A market value at the high end of that range would be above the roughly $70 billion in market capitalization that GM needs to achieve for the U.S. government to break even on its $43 billion remaining investment in the automaker.

But IPOs typically price at a discount of 10 percent to 15 percent to theoretical fair value to reward investors for taking a risk on a new issue and pave the way for future stock floats. In tough market conditions, that discount can be even larger.

“You have to sell people on the notion that there is an upside to what they are buying,” one of the sources said.

Another of the sources said the discount could be as much as 20 percent on the GM IPO compared with the U.S. Treasury’s break-even point.

Preparations for the GM stock offering remain in the early stages. A number of the sources cautioned that the size and value of the deal and the size of the stake to be sold by the U.S. government have not been determined and will not be set for weeks.

The U.S. Treasury is concerned about how many overseas investors it should allow to buy big stakes in General Motors Co. through the carmaker’s initial public offering this fall, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal.

The caution—aimed at minimizing any political fallout from the massive stock sale—could involve limiting or being selective about which non-U.S. investors such as sovereign-wealth funds would be invited to be “cornerstone” investors in the IPO, said these people.

Cornerstone investors typically are recruited to commit to buying and holding a large stake at a set share price as a show of confidence intended to draw in other investors. In exchange, they sometimes get a better price on the stock.

Sovereign-wealth funds and other overseas investors hold big stakes in many major U.S. companies. But the issue is touchy for GM, since U.S. taxpayers poured $50 billion into the car maker last year to fund its bankruptcy reorganization. The Treasury would begin to sell its shares through the IPO.

A decision on to what extent such overseas groups will be allowed as cornerstone investors in the IPO is expected within the next couple of weeks, these people said.

A larger group of cornerstone investors could clear the way for the Treasury to offload a bigger piece of its 61% stake in GM through the stock sale, which is planned for mid-November. GM and the banks underwriting the deal are pushing for the biggest possible investor pool to increase the size of the stock offering, which will likely involve stakes in the car maker sold by the Treasury, a union-managed retiree trust fund and Canadian governments.

The company would like to eliminate the U.S. stake as soon as possible since it has dissuaded some potential customers from buying its vehicles. But the Treasury wants to hold out for the best possible price for its stake in an effort to make the government whole on its investment or even make a profit. That might involve the U.S. selling less of its stake this fall and more over time.

To have cornerstone investors in place in time for the IPO, GM would need to have a plan in place in the next couple weeks, said the people familiar with the matter.

The automaker plans to launch a “road show,” in which it would pitch the IPO to investors, immediately after the Nov. 2 midterm elections, with a goal of holding the offering before the end of November, people familiar with the plans said.

That time frame would give GM a chance to include its third-quarter performance as part of its pitch. The company, which made $1.3 billion in the second quarter, its largest quarterly profit in six years, has said it expects to continue to make money in the year’s second half, though the profits will be slimmer.

A key part of the road-show message will be an assurance that new Chief Executive Dan Akerson will remain with the company for several years, according to people familiar with the matter. Akerson took over as CEO on Wednesday, succeeding Edward E. Whitacre Jr.

The 61-year-old Akerson told the board he would stay from two to five years, or possibly longer, said people familiar with the matter. Whitacre was unwilling to make that commitment, leading to his announcement last month that he would step down as CEO this week and as chairman by year’s end.

GM’s board felt it was critical to present a long-term CEO to investors as part of its IPO pitch.

Akerson, known for his work as a telecommunications deal-maker, is GM’s fourth CEO in less than two years. He had been named by the government to the company’s board last summer. Akerson’s compensation package will likely include financial incentives that kick in after a few years on the job as a way to signal he intends to stay.

On Thursday, Akerson sent a Labor Day-timed message to employees in which he said he had met recently with United Auto Workers President Bob King and is confident the carmaker and union can work together.

Describing a meeting with Mr. King and UAW Vice President Joe Ashton, Akerson said, “While we will not always see eye to eye on everything, GM will succeed to the extent that management and labor work together.”

WASHINGTON – General Motors Co. won’t send its executives on a worldwide tour, aimed at convincing potential investors to buy its stock, until after the Nov. 2 midterm elections.

A person briefed on the matter confirmed GM’s plan for a post-election investors’ road show, followed by the initial public offering of its stock a few weeks afterward.

Led by new CEO Daniel Akerson, who took the reins of GM Wednesday, the automaker’s stock sales team will court investors in Asia, Europe and around the United States, the person told The Detroit News.

The post-election timetable gives the Securities and Exchange Commission about three months to approve GM’s registration statement, which was filed last month.

The exact timing of the road show and stock sale could change, depending on market conditions. The SEC’s approval process could also delay the sale.

The Associated Press, citing two people with knowledge of the process, reported Thursday that GM’s board of directors hasn’t approved a date for the IPO and is expected to meet next week to discuss the issue.

But Scott Sweet, senior managing partner for IPO Boutique, told The Detroit News he has learned from multiple sources that GM will set its stock price Nov. 17, and the stock will be offered for sale the following day. He declined to name his sources.

Tampa-based IPO Boutique specializes in IPO research.

GM is in a “quiet period” before its IPO, so no company official or spokesperson is authorized to discuss the process publicly.

The Detroit-based automaker faces a weak market for public offerings and will have to convince investors it can perform well, even though it already has predicted weaker second-half results for the year than the $2.2 billion profit posted in the first half.

A November stock sale likely will come after GM releases its earnings for its third quarter, which ends Sept. 30. If the third-quarter earnings are good, it could push up the stock price, analysts say.

After it secures SEC approval, GM will file an amended registration that includes the number of shares to be sold, and an offering price.

The U.S. Treasury Department hasn’t decided how much of its 61 percent stake in GM it will sell. As part of the 2009 federal bailout, the government took the equity stake in exchange for about $43 billion in loans to GM.

Administration officials have insisted that they aren’t driving the timing of the IPO. Under the automaker’s agreement with the Treasury, it needed to make its best efforts to go public by July 2010, but wasn’t required to do so. GM decided this year it needed more time.

Numerous published reports have suggested the government could sell between $10 billion and $16 billion, but government officials may opt to sell for less if market conditions dictate.

GM also is likely to sell preferred stock of $2 billion to $3 billion, based on how much common stock is sold. Generally, companies sell preferred stock at a ratio of one share for every five shares of common stock.

Several Wall Street banks made pitches to be lead underwriters for GM’s IPO, according to a book coming out next month by the White House’s former auto czar, Steve Rattner.

Rattner also writes in the book, “Overhaul,” that GM’s board last month was considering two candidates for the CEO job besides Akerson: lead director Patricia Russo and Steve Girsky.

Girsky, a GM board member and longtime Wall Street analyst who covered the auto industry and had worked for former GM CEO Rick Wagoner, had no management experience. And Russo had a rocky tenure as a CEO of Lucent Technology, which suffered repeated losses while she headed the company.

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.”

The Obama Administration initially wanted Nissan-Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn to run GM after Rick Wagoner was ousted in 2009, and repeatedly pressed Fiat to put up cash for a stake in Chrysler, according to an upcoming book about the government bailout of General Motors and Chrysler, reported Automotive News.

Steven Rattner, President Obama’s auto adviser who steered the government’s $85 billion bailout of GM and Chrysler, is about to publish a tell-all account about his six-month stint inside the White House.

The Detroit News, Washington Post and Huffington Post obtained draft copies of the book — “Overhaul: An Insider’s Account of the Obama Administration’s Emergency Rescue of the Auto Industry.” It is scheduled to be published Oct. 14.

Rattner joined the White House Auto Team after the initial bailout of GM and Chrysler by the Bush administration. He departed in July 2009, after Chrysler and GM exited bankruptcy.

In the book, he said he offered the top job at GM to Ghosn after Wagoner was dismissed by the White House in March 2009. In 2006, Wagoner turned down a chance to have GM join the Renault-Nissan alliance. Ghosn declined Rattner’s offer, largely because Renault and Nissan were also navigating the industry’s deep downturn and he “felt considerable loyalty to both companies and wanted to see them through the crisis,” Rattner wrote.

Rattner also wooed an unidentified executive from the Midwest to become GM chairman, and flew to the prospects’s home for a meeting before settling on Kent Kresa, who was already on the GM board.

Just a few months afterward, Rattner selected former AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre Jr. to join the GM board as chairman.

Among other highlights from the book, drawn from the Detroit News, Washington Post and Huffington Post accounts:

• In one of his first meetings to discuss GM and Chrysler’s predicament after winning the 2008 election, Obama asked “Why can’t they make a Corolla?”
  “We wish we knew,” his advisers replied.
• The White House initially planned for a $100 billion bailout. The aid package GM, Chrysler and their related finance arms eventually secured totaled $85 billion.
• The administration also weighed a $10 billion fund to aid ailing auto suppliers but reduced the package to $5 billion. Government officials also considered a plan to provide funding to steer suppliers through bankruptcy.
• The White House often considered the political consequences of the bailouts. White House adviser David Axelrod once brought fresh polling data to a discussion about the Chrysler rescue, and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel identified congressmen who represented districts where major Chrysler operations were located.
• Emanuel, when reminded that tens of thousands of factory jobs were at stake, once uttered a common profanity expressing disdain for the UAW.
• Democratic Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, dejected about the likelihood GM and Chrysler would have to seek bankruptcy protection, told Obama in a voice barely louder than a whisper: “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
• Obama was alarmed by the decision to allow a forced-out Wagoner to collect $7.1 million of the $22.1 million he was owed in GM pension benefits.

“I could see the president’s jaw muscles tighten,” Rattner says in the book, according to the Detroit News. Obama, a former community organizer, had difficulty with the “notion of writing a check that was about 100 times the annual income of a GM worker to the CEO who had brought the company down.”

Obama, Rattner wrote, “grimaced and reluctantly acquiesced. I found it striking that the president of the United States had spent more time on an issue of executive pay than on the question of whether to dismiss a major CEO in the first place.”

Rattner says Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne clashed with UAW President Ron Gettelfinger over the terms of the Chrysler bailout, and sought to take advantage of Obama’s desire for a quick tie-up between Fiat and Chrysler.

The government, Rattner says, also pressed Fiat to put up money for a 20 percent stake and management control of Chrysler. The request was unsuccessful, and Fiat gained management control and a 20 percent stake in the automaker without putting up any cash.

Marchionne, according to Rattner’s book, told Gettelfinger the union needed to embrace a “culture of poverty” instead of a “culture of entitlement,” by slashing, among other things, retiree health-care benefits.

The comment drew an angry reply from Gettelfinger.

“Why don’t you come and sit with me and tell a 75-year-old widow that she can’t have surgery and that you killed her husband?” he said.

In the book, Rattner, according to the Huffington Post, does emphasize that Obama didn’t seem to prefer the giant auto workers unions, either, stating that “no one in the Obama administration ever asked us to favor labor for political reasons.”

WASHINGTON — As General Motors moves to become a public company again, all the big decisions on the timing, size and price of the share offering will be left to its largest shareholder: the U.S. government.

The Obama administration, mindful of the politics surrounding its $50 billion GM bailout, says it is eager to liquidate its 61 percent stake in GM as swiftly and lucratively as possible, The Wall Street Journal reported.

But administration officials say there is no push to sell shares before the November midterm elections. “We want to do this as quickly as practicable, but in a way that protects our investment,” an Obama official familiar with timing discussions told the Journal.

The outcome of GM’s share offering will be a critical political milestone for the Obama White House. The administration’s decision last year to undertake a federal intervention in the affairs of the nation’s largest auto maker—firing GM chief executive Rick Wagoner and steering it through a bankruptcy restructuring—provoked a backlash among conservatives. GM executives say that backlash also extends to potential customers, who say they will bypass the auto maker because they object to the federal bailout.

The White House said it had to step in to prop up GM and the smaller Chrysler to avoid chaotic collapses at two huge employers in the nation’s heartland.

Now, as President Barack Obama tours the country to defend his economic policies, he has pointed to the rebounding auto industry to make the case that the taxpayer-funded interventions at GM and Chrysler accomplished their goals: Saving two iconic companies and salvaging thousands of jobs.

In a swing through Michigan last month, President Obama said that the entire U.S. auto industry was at risk in early 2009, when his administration decided to usher GM and Chrysler through bankruptcy proceedings with the help of tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer assistance.

“The industry looked like it was going over a cliff,” he told workers at a Chrysler plant.

He then cited figures showing that the U.S. auto industry had hired 55,000 new workers in the year since GM and Chrysler emerged from bankruptcy protection last summer, after shedding 334,000 jobs in the year leading up to the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies.

The GM IPO, though, will end up answering a much simpler question: How much did taxpayers lose—or gain—by bailing out GM last year?

Analysts say that the market would have to value GM’s stock at around $70 billion for the government to recover the whole of its remaining investment—a target that some say is unlikely, but not impossible.

NEW YORK – General Motors Co. may sell preferred stock alongside its initial public offering of common shares, reported Reuters based on a draft of its regulatory filing and two people briefed on the plan.

GM would get proceeds from the preferred offering and will not sell shares itself in the common offering, according to the draft and the people, who declined to be identified because the filing hasn’t been publicly released.

The automaker, 61 percent owned by the government, will seek to raise $12 billion to $16 billion in the IPO, a person familiar with the plan said last week. The U.S. Treasury will sell some of the shares it holds in the company, the people said.

The offering, which may be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission today, would be the second-largest in U.S. history, behind Visa Inc.’s $19.7 billion IPO in March 2008. Outgoing CEO Ed Whitacre has pushed to end government ownership of the company, which received a $50 billion taxpayer bailout following its bankruptcy in June 2009.

“They can hopefully generate enough funds to help operations,” said James Bell, executive market analyst at Kelley Blue Book in Irvine, Calif. “But the more important issue for them is to reduce the government’s position, in terms of the company’s public image.”

The preferred shares were added to attract hedge funds and other new investors because the shares have attributes of both debt and equity, the people familiar with the plans said.

Randy Arickx, a GM spokesman, declined to comment, as did Mark Paustenbach, a spokesman for the Treasury.

DETROIT – General Motors Co., moving to unwind itself from government control, filed plans to go public and begin selling common shares as early as this fall, Automotive News reported.

The filing — anticipated for weeks — came just 13 months after GM was restructured in bankruptcy with $50 billion in direct aid from the U.S. government.

GM said the amount of securities offered will be determined by market conditions and other factors at the time of the offering. The number of shares to be sold and the price range for the offering have not been determined, the automaker added.

GM hopes to raise $12 billion to $16 billion with the stock sale, Bloomberg News reported, making it among the biggest initial public offerings ever.

To make the offering appeal to a wider group of investors, including hedge funds, GM said it may also issue preferred shares.

In a bid to preserve cash, the automaker said it does not plan to pay a dividend on the common shares after the initial offering.

In the filing, GM said weak sales, underfunded pensions and the success of its restructuring efforts in Europe pose risks for the automaker.

While the auto industry has recovered this year, GM said “there is no assurance that this recovery in vehicle sales will continue or spread across all our markets.”

Still, the automaker said it expects its global market share to rise to 12.4 percent by 2014 from 11.9 percent this year.

GM’s ability to achieve long-term profitability depends on the company’s success at enticing customers to consider its products when purchasing a new vehicle, the filing said.

“Our competitors have been very successful in persuading customers that previously purchased our products to purchase their vehicles instead,” the company said.

In North America, GM also blamed its market-share losses over the past three years on negative consumer brand perception. To overcome consumer concerns, the automaker plans to enhance the fuel efficiency of its model lineup – a strategy it said is also key to sustained profits.

The success of the IPO will go a long way in determining how much American taxpayers will recover from their 61 percent stake in the automaker. Bloomberg said GM wants to sell a fifth of the government’s 304 million shares.

After the sale, the government’s stake in GM is expected to drop below 50 percent.

In a statement Wednesday, the Treasury Department said it “will retain the right, at all times, to decide whether and at what level to participate in the offering.”

In addition to the federal government, a UAW retiree health-care trust controls 17.5 percent of GM. Other stakeholders include the Canadian government, with 11.7 percent, and former GM bondholders, with 9.8 percent.

In its statement, GM said the common shares would be sold by “certain stockholders.”

In recent weeks, President Obama has pledged the government will recover all the taxpayer money his administration provided to bail out the auto industry last year.

For the government to recoup its full investment, GM’s market value must reach $70 billion — or 10 times the automaker’s market capitalization before it sought bankruptcy protection in June 2009.

WASHINGTON – General Motors Co. said it plans to recall more than 243,000 model year 2009/2010 crossover sport utilities, mainly in the United States, to inspect safety belts for possible damage, Reuters reported.

The automaker and regulators said most of the Chevy Traverse, Buick Enclave, GMC Acadia, and Saturn Outlook vehicles were shipped within the United States. Several thousands others were exported to Canada, Mexico, China, Saudi Arabia and other countries.

GM said potential damage to the second-row safety belts could make it appear as if the latch were properly secured when it was not.

The problem was discovered during warranty returns, and any damage was cosmetic in the vast majority of cases, GM said in documents filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

There are no known cases of belts failing in a crash, GM said.

GM said it would begin notifying owners by letter this month to make appointments with dealership service departments for repairs.