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With two large initial public offerings by consumer-focused specialty finance companies already in the books and another in the works, 2014 is shaping up as a memorable year for new listings of the kind. That was before Citigroup Inc. CEO Michael Corbat on May 29 raised the prospect of an IPO as one of the ways in which his company might choose to divest its OneMain Financial branch-based personal loan business.
The January IPO of Santander Consumer USA Holdings Inc. generated gross proceeds of nearly $2.05 billion, according to SNL, and the April IPO of Ally Financial Inc. produced gross proceeds of almost $2.56 billion. General Electric Co. Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt confirmed during a May 21 presentation at an investor conference that General Electric Capital Corp. has targeted the third quarter for the pending IPO of North American retail finance company Synchrony Financial in a transaction that press reports have suggested could raise upward of $3.50 billion.
Corbat, in comments made in response to a question at an investor conference, confirmed that Citi had been preparing OneMain for a sale or exit, potentially late in 2014 or early in 2015 if, as he said, "the markets are right."
"I think as we get later into this year, we're going to start to explore what those exit options may be," Corbat said, according to a transcript of his remarks. The exit or sale, he added, "could be anything from a private equity sale, it could be an IPO, [or] it could be a combination of the two."
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