It took Ally Financial more than three years to finally reach the stock markets.
Shareholders so far, however, have greeted the lender’s public debut with a shrug.
Shares in Ally opened at $24.25, about 3 percent below the company’s initial public offering price. As of mid-morning, they recovered slightly but were still below the I.P.O. price of $25 a share. Underwriters had already priced the stock sale at the low end of an expected range.
The disappointing performance comes as I.P.O.s have found a slightly chillier reception among public investors lately. An exchange-traded fund that tracks new stock sales is down slightly for the year to date, after having risen by about 8 percent during the same time last year.
But Ally wasn’t seeking to raise money in its offering. Instead, the 95 million shares that were sold belonged to the Treasury Department, which has been moving to trim its holdings in the bailed-out lender. Even though the I.P.O. priced at the bottom of its expected range, it raised nearly $2.4 billion for taxpayers.
Now the federal government has recovered about $17.7 billion from its investments in the firm, more than the $17.2 billion that it poured in. It shrank its stake to 17 percent, from 35 percent.
Ally â€" once known as GMAC Financial, the financing arm of General Motors â€" ran into trouble during the financial crisis, as its onetime mortgage lending unit faltered under the weight of souring home loans. But the federal government stepped in to save the firm, as part of its plan to prop up G.M. and Chrysler.
Since then, Ally has shed a number of operations to help repay the government and refocus itself as an online bank and auto financing company.
