General Motors Said to Weigh Returning to Auto-Lending Business

General Motors Co. may return to the auto-lending business more than three years after selling control of GMAC LLC, according to three people familiar with the company’s plan.
GM may buy back the GMAC business, start a new finance unit or form a partnership with banks and other lenders, said the people, who asked not to be identified because details are private. Chief Executive Officer Ed Whitacre wants to form an in-house lender before selling shares in GM as soon as the fourth quarter, one person said.
Having a so-called captive credit arm may boost GM’s profit, enable dealers to offer better terms on leases and loans, and make an initial public offering more appealing to investors, said Rebecca Lindland, an IHS Global Insight analyst in Lexington, Massachusetts.
“The IPO is going to be more of a success if they can sell more vehicles than they have been selling,” Lindland said. “They should be able to do that if they can be more aggressive in their financing. Having their own finance company would certainly help.”
Whitacre has his management team exploring all options, the people said. Tom Wilkinson, a GM spokesman, declined to comment.
GMAC is now known as Ally Financial Inc. and is 56 percent owned by the U.S. Treasury after an injection of $17.2 billion under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
Meg Reilly, a Treasury Department spokeswoman, had no immediate comment, and Ally’s Gina Proia said an acquisition of its auto-finance business by GM was “speculation.”
“Our position is that if we are supporting our manufacturers and customers, then the relationship works,” Proia said.
Sold in 2006
GM sold 51 percent of Detroit-based GMAC to private-equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP in November 2006 as the biggest U.S. automaker ran low on cash. Since then, GM has had to rely on outside lenders, including GMAC.
The Federal Reserve approved GMAC’s bid to become a bank- holding company in December 2008, easing the threat of a default that would have further tightened credit for GM dealers as the recession deepened and auto sales plunged.
GM would probably want to acquire only the automotive business from Ally, and not operations such as the former ResCap mortgage unit, said Mark Wakefield, a director at Southfield, Michigan-based turnaround firm Alix Partners.
Alix is winding down GM’s bankrupt predecessor, General Motors Corp., which is now called Motors Liquidation Co. Wakefield said he isn’t involved in any consideration of forming a new finance company.
Retaking Control?
GM retaking control of the former GMAC’s auto-lending operations would require working out a solution with Chrysler Group LLC, which also uses Ally, Wakefield said.
Should GM own more than a 10 percent stake of any of Ally’s lending businesses, the finance unit would have to relinquish its bank-holding company status and wouldn’t have access to the Fed’s discount window for cheap funds, Wakefield said.
“It would take a while to convince the market that GMAC is safe and sound,” Wakefield said. “It will take a while to claw their way to a borrower rate that is competitive.”
Competitors that own finance companies can use in-house lenders to offer more-attractive car loans or leases, boosting sales, according to Colin Langan, a UBS Securities LLC analyst in New York. Ford Motor Co. is among the automakers in the U.S. with its own credit unit.
‘More Aggressive’
“It makes it much easier to do zero-percent financing and you can be a bit more aggressive in who you lend to,” said Langan, who recommends buying Ford shares.
GM also may benefit from having a finance unit that could pump up auto profits. Ford’s first-quarter profit was buoyed by $828 million in pretax operating income from Ford Motor Credit.
Russ Shelton, owner of Shelton Pontiac Buick GMC Inc. in Rochester Hills, Michigan, said GM dealers would welcome an in- house finance arm.
“Probably the biggest missing piece for GM is financing,” Shelton said. “Getting a customer financed today is the hardest thing, even if they have good numbers. I think we could probably overcome some of that with a captive finance arm.”--Editors: Jamie Butters, Ed Dufner the music of sadness
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Pope Benedict places blame for sex scandals on Catholic Church

Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday blamed the church's own sins for the clerical sex-abuse scandal -- not a campaign mounted by outsiders -- and called for profound purification to end what he called the "greatest persecution" the church has endured.His strongly worded comments placed responsibility for the crisis squarely on the sins of pedophile priests, repudiating the Vatican's initial response to the scandal, in which it blamed the news media as well as advocates of abortion rights and legalizing same-sex marriage for mounting what it called a campaign against the church and the pope.Speaking en route to Portugal, Benedict said the Catholic Church has always suffered from problems of its own making but that "today we see it in a truly terrifying way."
"The greatest persecution of the church doesn't come from enemies on the outside but is born from the sins within the church," the pontiff said. "The church needs to profoundly relearn penitence, accept purification, learn forgiveness -- but also justice." The comments marked Benedict's most thorough admission of the church's guilt in creating the scandal. Previously he blamed abusers themselves and, in the case of Ireland, the bishops who failed to stop them.He was responding to journalists' questions, submitted in advance, aboard the papal plane as he flew to Portugal. His four-day visit will take him from Lisbon to the famed Fatima shrine to Portugal's second city, Porto.Despite the Vatican's initial defensive response to hundreds of reports of clerical abuse in Europe, Benedict has promised that the church will take action. He has already started cleaning house, accepting the resignations of a few bishops who either admitted they molested youngsters or covered up for priests who did.But critics say he has not done nearly enough to repair the damage or protect children in the future. Some have noted that while Benedict has accepted some bishops' resignations, no bishop has been actively punished or defrocked, even those who admitted to molestation.
"Many are tiring of hearing about his 'strong comments.' They want to see strong action," said David Clohessy, director of the main U.S. victims group, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.
Church bells rang out as the pontiff proceeded through Lisbon from the airport in his popemobile. Several thousand people lined the streets on a rainy day, some shouting "Viva o Papa!" Some stretches of the route, however, were thinly attended.
In his airport remarks, Benedict criticized Portugal's 2007 law allowing abortion, saying officials must give "essential consideration" to issues that affect human life.sentiment
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