General Motors has said that it will begin making quarterly payments on the loans it took from the United States Treasury later this month, and now the automaker’s acting CEO, Ed Whitacre, says the company may pay the balance of its loans earlier than next June.
“We’ve thought about it. We’ll be looking at that possibility,” Whitacre said online during a chat with the media.
GM is expected to pay $1 billion to the U.S. government this month, but the company will take that money from a $17.4 billion escrow account funded by the government. If it sounds a little backwards, it’s because it is: GM is intending to use federal funds to pay back a federal loan.
Whitacre did not specify when GM would complete its first public stock offering – a vital step that would allow the governments of the U.S. and Canada to sell of their shares of the automaker.
