CIT Group files for bankruptcy

NEW YORK (Reuters) – CIT Group Inc, a lender to hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses, filed for bankruptcy on Sunday, as the global financial crisis left it unable to fund itself and the recession clobbered its loans.

• The bankruptcy, one of the largest in U.S. corporate history, has been widely expected for months and is unlikely to provide a massive near-term shock to the financial system. But CIT’s trouble could further weigh on the fragile U.S. economy.
• The bankruptcy is also a blow for the U.S. government, which invested $2.33 billion in CIT in December through the Troubled Asset Relief Program and will likely lose most of it.
• Taxpayers will receive money only after bank debt and bond investors are repaid. The bankruptcy would translate to the first realized loss for the government from TARP, although it may recover some funds over time.
• CIT had fought activist investor Carl Icahn, who said he was CIT’s largest bondholder, over its future plans. But late last week the two resolved their differences. Most of CIT’s creditors have already approved its reorganization plan, and the company said it hopes to emerge from bankruptcy by the end of the year, around when Chief Executive Jeff Peek is slated to resign.
• Getting through bankruptcy quickly is crucial for CIT if it wishes to keep its customers, which include Dunkin’ Donuts franchisees and film producer Dark Castle Entertainment.
• “The longer a financial institution stays in bankruptcy, the more the value of the business dissipates. It’s faith and trust and perception that are so important for a financial institution,” said Jack Williams, a bankruptcy law professor at Georgia State University College of Law.
• CIT does intend to stay in business, and its operating subsidiaries were not part of the New York bankruptcy court filing. CIT is still making new loans and honoring commitments to fund customers, people familiar with the matter said.
• Once CIT emerges from bankruptcy, it hopes to move businesses including vendor finance, which companies use to offer financing to their customers, and factoring, which helps companies finance their unpaid bills to customers, into its bank subsidiary.
• If regulators approve the move, CIT hopes to fund new loans and leases for those businesses with bank deposits.
• S&P 500 stock index futures opened slightly lower on Sunday and the U.S. dollar edged higher as news of the bankruptcy spurred traders to reduce risk-taking.
• The bankruptcy filing is unlikely to crater financial markets, said Chip Hanlon, president of Delta Global Advisors in Huntington Beach, California, but he noted it’s not a positive.
• “If anything it may be psychological and weigh on people’s mind about how things are overall. It adds to peoples’ question marks about how healthy the economy is,” Hanlon said.
• THE PLAN
• CIT, which filed for protection under Chapter 11 in the Southern District of New York, plans to reduce its total debt by about $10 billion in bankruptcy.