Treasury Takes Loss on Tarp Auctions

The Treasury Department has unloaded its latest round of bank stocks from the Troubled Asset Relief Program at a deep discount.

The Treasury said Wednesday it has sold shares of preferred stock and subordinated debt it held in 11 banks via auctions that are expected to net $191.3 million, or roughly 66 cents on the dollar.

The banks received a combined $285 million from the government over roughly a year starting in December 2008.

Agency officials said previously they were prepared for bigger discounts in sales of Tarp stakes that remain. Seven banks in the latest round had fallen behind on quarterly payments tied to the shares Treasury took.

The auctions are expected to close in February. Once they are done, taxpayers will have recovered roughly $268 billion from Tarp's bank programs through repayments, dividends, interest and other income, or roughly $23 billion more than originally invested, Treasury said.

 "These auctions are continuing to help community banks replace temporary government support with private capital as we wind down Tarp," Timothy Massad, the assistant secretary for financial stability, said in a press release.

The stakes auctioned were Treasury's holdings in: Dickinson Financial Services in Kansas City, Mo.; Colony Bankcorp in Fitzgerald, Ga.; Citizens Bancshares in Chillicothe, Mo.; Alliance Financial Services in Saint Paul, Minn.; HMN Financial in Rochester, Minn.; First Priority Financial in Malvern, Pa.; Coastal Banking Co. in Beaufort, S.C.; Delmar Bancorp in Salisbury, Md.; F&M Bancshares in Trezevant, Tenn.; Biscayne Bancshares in Coconut Grove, Fla.; and Waukesha Bankshares in Wisconsin.

Roughly 212 banks remained in Tarp's capital purchase program, the primary source of aid to banks, as of Dec. 31, while Treasury continued to hold warrants in roughly 46 others, according to a report released Tuesday by the program's special inspector general.

Treasury had realized roughly $3.1 billion in write-offs and losses from the capital purchase program as of Dec. 31.

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