The U.S. Treasury Department auctioned of the warrants it held on PNC Financial Services (NYSE: PNC) Friday, raising roughly $324 billion from the sale. The auction has followed several others that has enabled the Treasury to recoup more than $5 billion in Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds.
Friday’s PNC warrant auction raised the third largest amount of money, following Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) and JP Morgan (NYSE: JPM), which drew about $1.1 billion and $900 million, respectively.
The auction consisted of 16.9 million warrants that give investors the right to purchase PNC stock at $67.63 a share up until 2018. The Treasury set the minimum bid price for the securities at $15 each, but the average sale price ended up reaching $19.20 per warrant.
The Treasury Department received the PNC warrants as part of the $7.58 billion bailout provided to the bank through TARP. PNC, which is the sixth largest U.S. bank, repaid the funds back in February. However, the bank was not able to agree on a price with the Treasury Department to repurchase the warrants, so the securities went to auction.
Shares of PNC Financial have rallied on Friday, up 1.5 percent to $67.05 in mid-afternoon trade.
