The U.S. Treasury, under pressure to quickly wind down its crisis-era bailouts, believes that it cannot rush the sale of auto lender Ally Financial because the company's mortgage lending unit is in a messy bankruptcy, Reuters reported on Friday. Ally is one of Treasury's largest remaining holdings, but the lender will be hard to exit as long as it is working through the bankruptcy of its Residential Capital unit and is also selling its international operations. In a report last month, an internal Treasury watchdog said that the agency needed a more concrete plan for repayment of the $17.2 billion it poured into Ally during the crisis. The government's difficulties in exiting Ally show how hard it will be for Treasury to completely close down TARP. Treasury has recovered 93 percent of the $418 billion it put into the program, but remaining companies could take a long time to shed.
