Ally Financial

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Ally Financial Inc.
Type Private
Industry Financial services
Founded 1919
Headquarters Detroit, Michigan, U.S.
Key people Franklin Hobbs (Chairman)
Michael A. Carpenter (CEO)
William Muir (President)
Services Auto financing
Online banking
Mortgage loans
Revenue Decrease US$ 9.736 billion (2011)[1]
Operating income Decrease US$67 million (2011)[1]
Profit Decrease US-$157 million (2011)[1]
Total assets Increase US$184.06 billion (2011)[1]
Total equity Decrease US$19.37 billion (2011)[1]
Owner(s) U.S. Government (73.7%)
Cerberus Capital Management, L.P. (8.7%)
Motors Liquidation Company (5.9%)
General Motors (4%)
Employees 14,400 (2010)[1]
Website Ally.com

Ally Financial Inc., previously known as GMAC Inc. (an acronym for General Motors Acceptance Corporation), is a bank holding company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States at Tower 200 of the Renaissance Center. The bank has more than 15 million customers worldwide and provides a range of financial services including auto financing, insurance, mortgage services, and online banking. In 2009, Ally employed 18,900 people. In 2008, the firm provided financing to 75% of the 6,450 General Motors dealers. On 24 December 2008, the Federal Reserve accepted then-GMAC's application to become a bank holding company.[2] Ally returned to profitability in 2010, posting a net profit of $1.075 billion for the fiscal year.[1] Ally planned but did not execute an initial public stock offering in 2011.

Contents

Structure [edit]

As of December 2010, 73.8% of Ally was owned by the United States Treasury, with the remainder divided between Cerberus Capital Management, General Motors, and other investors.[3]

The company's Global Automotive Services offer retail auto financing and leasing; dealer lines of credit for vehicle inventory, equipment or facilities; insurance coverages including retail vehicle service contracts and commercial insurance; and remarketing services through physical auctions and online services. Ally Financial also operates Ally Servicing (previously Semperian) within its Global Automotive Services division. Ally Servicing provides customer relationship management, servicing, and collection through several inbound call centers across the U.S.

Ally Financial's mortgage subsidiaries include Residential Capital, LLC (ResCap) and the mortgage activities of Ally Bank and ResMor Trust. Through these divisions, the company focuses primarily on the residential real estate market in the U.S. Business activities include the origination, purchase, servicing, sale and securitization of residential mortgage loans.

GMAC Home Services is the parent for GMAC Real Estate, formed by the purchase of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate in 1998, and GHS Mortgage. Brookfield Residential Poperty Services purchased the GMAC Home Services business in September 2008. Brookfield is a wholly owned subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management, a global asset manager located in Toronto, Canada.

Ally Financial's subsidiary bank in the U.S., Ally Bank, offers savings products, including certificates of deposit (CDs), online savings accounts, interest checking accounts and money market accounts. ResMor Trust Company offers Ally-branded deposit products in Canada, including online savings, guaranteed investment certificates (GIC) and tax free products. Ally Bank and ResMor Trust Company are members of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Canadian Deposit Insurance Corporation respectively.

History [edit]

The company, renamed Ally Financial in 2010, was founded in 1919 by General Motors Corporation as the General Motors Acceptance Corporation (GMAC) to be a provider of financing to automotive customers. Since then, the business has expanded to include insurance, online banking, mortgage operations, and commercial finance.

In 1919, GMAC branches opened in Detroit, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Toronto.[4]

In 1985, GMAC formed GMAC Mortgage after it acquired the mortgage loan operations of the Colonial Mortgage Service companies and the servicing arm of the former Norwest Mortgage, Inc. In subsequent years, the division acquired additional mortgage-related operations, including ditech.com, and in 2005 the division was reorganized into Residential Capital (ResCap). By that time, the company was heavily into subprime lending.[5]

In 2000, GMAC was given conditional approval to form GMAC Bank.

In 2006, General Motors Corporation sold a 51% interest in GMAC to Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity company. (The next year, Cerberus acquired Chrysler Corporation.) Also in 2006, GMAC divested a majority stake of GMAC Commercial Holdings, its real estate division, to a trio of investors — Goldman Sachs, KKR and Five Mile Capital Partners — thereby creating Capmark Financial Group Inc.[6] Capmark later filed for bankruptcy and was acquired in part jointly by Leucadia and Berkshire Hathaway.[7][8]

On December 29, 2008, the United States Department of the Treasury invested $5 billion in GMAC from its $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

On May 15, 2009, GMAC's banking unit changed its name to Ally Bank.

On May 21, 2009, the U.S. Treasury announced it would invest an additional $7.5 billion in GMAC LLC, which gave the U.S. government a majority stake in the company.[9]

On December 30, 2009, the U.S. Treasury department said that they would invest another $3.8 billion in GMAC because the company had been unable to raise additional funds in the private sector. This raised the total government investment in GMAC to $16.3 billion.[10]

On May 10, 2010, GMAC Inc. announced that it re-branded itself as Ally Financial Inc.[11]

On December 30, 2010, the U.S. Treasury announced it would be converting $5.5 billion of interest-bearing preferred Ally stock into common equity.[12]

On March 31, 2011, Ally Financial filed with the SEC for an initial public offering, although was not pursued due to stock market volatility of summer 2011.[13]

On November 9, 2011, the bank announced it was considering filing for bankruptcy-protection for its ResCap mortgage unit, after the unit's loan write-downs of around half a billion dollars brought it close to the legally required net asset value threshold of $250 million.[14][15]

As of January, 2012, TARP had about $12 billion invested in Ally.[16] The government stake represented a 74% ownership interest in Ally. In March, 2012, Ally failed the Federal Reserve's so-called financial "stress test" for capital adequacy. The company said in a statement that the Fed's “analysis dramatically overstates potential contingent mortgage risk”. A possible outcome would be a requirement to raise additional capital.[17]

On May 15, 2012, the company put its ResCap subsidiary into Chapter 11 bankruptcy after it failed to make an interest payment of $20 million on unsecured debt. ResCap had written off $22 billion in mortgages in 2009, 2010, and 2011 much of it subprime mortgages. The move was seen as attempt for the company to focus on its profitable core business of auto loans and direct banking (Ally showed a $2.72 billion profit in 2011 in its auto finance unit but had a $402 million loss at ResCap).[18]

Legal Action against Ally Financial [edit]

On October 6, 2010 Attorney General of Ohio Richard Cordray filed suit against Ally Financial Inc seeking $25,000 in penalties for each instance of fraud, in addition to undisclosed amount of consumer restitution. The action could potentially mean hundreds or thousands of individual penalties for each instance of robo-signing that occurred in the state of Ohio. See Whelan, Robie (October 7, 2010) – "Robo-signer debate: Was it fraud?" – The Wall-Street Journal.

College Bowl Game sponsorship [edit]

From 2001 to 2010, GMAC sponsored the GMAC Bowl played annually at Ladd Peebles Stadium in Mobile, Alabama.

NASCAR sponsorship [edit]

GMAC sponsored Brian Vickers in the #5 GMAC Chevrolet in the NASCAR Busch Series in 2003 and in the #25 GMAC/ditech.com Chevrolet in the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series in 2004. In 2007 GMAC Sponsored Casey Mears with co-sponsorship from the United States National Guard.

See also [edit]

References [edit]

  1. ^ a b c d e f g "2011 Form 10-K, Ally Financial Inc.". United States Securities and Exchange Commission. 
  2. ^ Dash, Eric; Vikas Bajaj (December 24, 2008). "Fed Approves GMAC Request to Become a Bank". New York Times. 
  3. ^ "Ownership Structure". Ally. 2010-12. Retrieved 2011-04-22. 
  4. ^ Ally: Our History
  5. ^ http://www.gmacmortgage.com/About_Us/Company_Info/History.html
  6. ^ "Investor Group Completes Acquisition of Majority Stake in GMAC Commercial Holding Corp." (Press release). Ally Financial. 23 March 2006. Retrieved 21 September 2011. 
  7. ^ Jeff Blumenthal (19 September 2011), "Berkadia Commercial Mortgage to buy Tavernier Capital", Philadelphia Business Journal, retrieved 21 September 2011 
  8. ^ Richard Schafer (11 March 2010), Capmark Financial Group Files For Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, Richard Schafer, archived from the original on 21 September 2011, retrieved 21 September 2011 
  9. ^ Detnews.com | This article is no longer available online | detnews.com | The Detroit News[dead link]
  10. ^ Bunkley, Nick (December 31, 2009). "GMAC Gets $3.8 Billion More in Aid". The New York Times. 
  11. ^ "GMAC Posts Quarterly Profit, Plans to Adopt Ally Name". bloomberg.com. 2010-05-03. Retrieved 2010-05-13. [dead link]
  12. ^ Treasury converting $5.5 billion Ally stock - MarketWatch
  13. ^ SAHA-BUBNA, APARAJITA; LYNN COWAN (10 June 2011). "Ally Delays IPO Meant to Repay Government Bailout". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2 September 2011. 
  14. ^ Ally Rethinks ResCap Ties, Wall Street Journal, 9 November 2011
  15. ^ Fitch cuts Ally's ResCap on mortgage performance, MarketWatch.com, 11 November 2011
  16. ^ Gordon, Marcy, "Report: Taxpayers still owed $133B from bailout", Associated Press via Atlanta Journal-Constitution, January 26, 2012. Retrieved 2012-01-26.
  17. ^ Orol, Ronald D., "Citi among banks that fail Fed stress test", MarketWatch, March 13, 2012. Retrieved 2012-03-14.
  18. ^ USA Today. 14 May 2012 http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2012/05/auto-bailout-ex-gmac-puts-mortgage-unit-in-bankruptcy/1#.T7jX3MUbttw |url= missing title (help). 

External links [edit]