Who Holds Some of Chrysler’s Debt
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What do the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Halliburton (HAL: 22.33, 1.48, 7.1%) have in common?
Both the charity and the oil industrial giant own senior secured positions in the now-bankrupt Chrysler.
In a bankruptcy filing made public on Monday, the embattled auto maker listed dozens of mutual funds, city and state pension funds, charities and companies that own stakes in Chrysler’s debt. All these entities will now have to maneuver through bankruptcy court in order to get a portion of their investments back.
The court filing painted a grim picture for the bankrupt car maker. Chrysler sits on $39.3 billion in assets, but has outstanding liabilities of $55.2 billion. That means nearly all of the company’s major creditors will have to take some sort of a financial haircut while the company goes through the Chapter 11 reorganization process.
Among the more notable names included in the list of Chrysler’s debt holders was the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the multibillion-dollar charity organization headed by its namesake, the Microsoft founder and his wife. The charity owns an unspecified amount of Chrysler debt.
A call to the foundation in an effort to clarify its Chrysler holdings was not immediately returned.
Other notable organizations and companies named as senior debt holders of Chrysler debt were the oil company Halliburton, Kraft Foods (KFT: 24.25, 0.74, 3.15%), Indiana University, University of Kentucky, the endowment of Yale University and several state and city pension funds.
A University of Kentucky spokesman said that a Chrysler position represented “less than 0.1%” of the university’s overall endowment. Representatives from University of Indiana and Yale did not immediately return calls for comment.
Also named in the filing are the major financials such as Citigroup (C: 3.23, 0.2401, 8.03%), Goldman Sachs (GS: 134.3548, 7.3048, 5.75%), JPMorgan Chase (JPM: 35.92, 3.47, 10.69%), Deutsche Bank (DB: 57.01, 3.91, 7.36%) and Morgan Stanley (MS: 27.17, 1.21, 4.66%).
All stand to lose considerable amounts on their investments.
The list also names two funds run by Oppenheimer and a hedge fund run by Stairway Capital Management, now acknowledged as the big financial firms that rejected the Treasury Department’s debt-reduction deal offered to lenders late last week.
Near the end of the alphabetical debt holder list — but certainly not the least important — is the U.S. Treasury Department, also known as the American taxpayer, which lent Chrysler $4 billion when both Chrysler and General Motors (GM: 1.81, 0.009, 0.5%) when to Congress to ask for financial help.
Because the car maker is now in bankruptcy, the U.S. taxpayers, who did not take a senior secured position in Chrysler, will have wait in line to get their money back like everyone else.


