Filed under: BMW, Earnings/Financials
The U.S. government's Commercial Paper Funding Facility was established towards the tail-end of 2008. The CPFF was created to offer companies short-terms loan when traditional means of establishing credit were crumbling. Lehman Brothers had collapsed and AIG was taking expensive trips while showing the world its pocket lint, but that didn't mean that other companies weren't in need of cash, and Washington stepped in to oblige. According to
Bloomberg, among those parties taking advantage of the Federal Reserve program were a long list of automotive clients, German automaker
BMW among them.
According to
Bloomberg, German automaker secured funding assistance intermittently between 2008 and 2009, with the largest single transaction a reported $3.62 billion. This line of credit helped BMW survive during a time when other automakers were getting by on life support. Some of the funds were used to expand the South Carolina facility that produces
X3,
X5 and
X6 models. While suffering its lowest profit in a decade, BMW was still able to produce a positive cash flow of nearly $2 billion.
Taking a look at the data provided by the Feds (download the spreadsheet
here - *
Warning: Excel spreadsheet), we see that a number of automakers and compnaies also made use of the CPFF, including
Harley-Davidson (
33 separate instances totaling $2.3 billion),
Toyota,
Ford,
Chrysler,
General Motors and
Mitsubishi.
[Sources:
Bloomberg,
The Washington Post | Image:
Drew Phillips/AOL]
Report: BMW, Harley-Davidson among those that tapped Federal Reserve for billions during crisis originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 02 Dec 2010 18:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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