GE to Sell More Genworth Stock

General Electric Co., Stamford, Conn., will sell 60 million shares of class A common stock of Genworth Financial, Richmond, Va., in a secondary public offering.In addition, GE will sell 21 million shares to Citigroup Global Markets Inc., New York. In turn, an affiliate of Citigroup intends to publicly offer securities exchangeable for Genworth class A common stock. Overallotment options of 9 million shares and 3.15 million shares have been granted to the underwriters of the secondary offering and to Citigroup, respectively. The global coordinator and bookrunner for the offering is Morgan Stanley, with Bank of America Securities, JP Morgan, and Merrill Lynch as joint lead managers and bookrunners. In the Genworth IPO in May 2004, GE sold 30% of the company to the public. An offering announced in March cut its holdings to 51%, and if this deal is completed, GE will own just 32% of Genworth. The market did not react well to the announcement at first. As of shortly before 1 p.m. Sept. 14, Genworth was trading at $31.16 per share, down $0.62 on the day. But at one point after the deal was announced, Genworth was down to $30.91 per share. Among the lines of business GE spun off to Genworth was the mortgage insurance operation based in Raleigh, N.C.