Ally Financial Inc. came one step closer to exiting the U.S. government's crisis-era bailout plan after the Treasury Department on Friday said that it had further pared its stake in the auto lender, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. Treasury, which has kicked off the second stage of its plan to publicly sell shares of Ally, now holds 66.2 million shares of the company's common stock. That translates into a stake of roughly 13.8 percent, down from the 16 percent Treasury held in August. Treasury last month had said that it planned to sell its remaining shares of the auto lender in the open market, although it didn't detail exactly how many it would sell at the time. Friday, it said that it had sold 8.9 million shares, recovering about $218.7 million for taxpayers. It again didn't detail how many shares it would sell in the latest stage of the trading plan. The U.S. Treasury Department, which rescued Ally with a $17.2 billion bailout during the financial crisis, has been steadily reducing its ownership of the former General Motors Co. financing arm, with the aim of exiting the investment altogether.
