as of yesterday, i officially work for a company receiving assistance from TARP's capital purchase program
the NYT headline was too negative (“…to take Bailout Money and Issue Stock”) while the WSJ headline surprisingly left out the semi-major point (“…Plans to Raise $2.1 Billion”), so i made up my own summary statement.
i’m not sure my feelings on this anymore. the financial services industry as a whole fought hard in late september to get the emergency economic stabilization act passed, and (on the second try) we were pleased with that outcome. then the life insurance sector jumped through hoops to be able to apply to TARP’s CPP, and we were again successful. many months later, treasury came back and gave approval for the release of $22 billion in assistance to life insurers. success, right?
i don’t know. only one other company and my own are ultimately taking treasury’s offer. we’re “only” taking $950 million of the $2.5 billion we were approved for, whereas the other company is taking the entire $3.4 billion it was offered. and tons of other life insurance companies besides us are also raising capital, but that we’re raising some of ours via TARP is a bit of a scarlet letter within the industry (and especially working in government affairs). an ironic scarlet letter, perhaps, considering a few months ago almost all the companies were on their knees to be approved.
we’ll see. on a personal level, i frankly don’t care a ton because my job is very likely being eliminated in 2 1/2 months anyway. but we’ll save that super fun topic for another time.
