The US Department of the Treasury has entered into a third pre-arranged written trading plan under which Morgan Stanley, as Treasury's sales agent, will have discretionary authority to sell 1.5 billion shares of Citigroup common stock under certain parameters.
Treasury received 7.7 billion shares of Citigroup common stock last summer as part of the exchange offers conducted by Citigroup to strengthen its capital base. Treasury exchanged the $25bn in preferred stock it received in connection with Citigroup’s participation in the Capital Purchase Program for common shares at a price of $3.25 per common share.
Treasury currently owns approximately 5.1 billion shares of Citigroup common stock and said it plans to continue selling its shares in the market in an orderly fashion.
On July 1, 2010, Treasury announced the completion of its sale of a total of approximately 2.6 billion shares of Citigroup common stock across two trading plans and its receipt of approximately $10.5bn in gross proceeds from the sale.