Ally Financial Inc.'s initial public offering has been priced at the lower-end of the expected range at $25 per share, an underwriter said, valuing the bailed-out auto lender at about $12.04 billion, Reuters reported yesterday. The IPO raised about $2.38 billion, making it the biggest U.S. offering so far this year, eclipsing that of Santander Consumer USA Holdings Inc. and IMS Health Holdings Inc. Santander Consumer, the auto-finance unit of Spanish bank Santander, raised $1.8 billion in January, valuing the firm at about $8.34 billion at its offering price. The U.S. Treasury, which bailed out Ally for $17.2 billion during the 2008 financial crisis under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), sold all the 95 million shares on offer. Ahead of the IPO, taxpayers had recovered $15.3 billion of that investment. The Treasury department said in a statement that including the anticipated proceeds from the IPO, taxpayers would have recovered about $500 million more than what was originally invested in the company.
