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Wikipedia: Ally Financial
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History
The following section is an excerpt from Wikipedia's Ally Financial page on 22 September 2019, text available via the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
The company was founded in 1919 by General Motors (GM) as the General Motors Acceptance Corporation (GMAC) to provide financing to automotive customers. In 1939, the company founded Motors Insurance Corporation and entered the vehicle insurance market.
In 1985, while GM was under the leadership of Roger Smith, who sought to diversify the company, GMAC formed GMAC Mortgage and acquired Colonial Mortgage as well as the servicing arm of Norwest Mortgage, which included an $11 billion mortgage portfolio.
In 1991, the company was forced to write-off $275 million in bad debt as part of a $436 million loss suffered from fraud committed by John McNamara, who ran a Ponzi scheme.
In 1998, the company formed GMAC Real Estate. In 1999, GMAC Mortgage acquired Ditech. In 2000, the company formed GMAC Bank, a direct bank. In 2005, the company formed GMAC ResCap as a holding company for its mortgage operations.
In 2006, General Motors sold a 51% interest in GMAC to Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity firm. Also that year, GMAC sold a controlling interest of GMAC Commercial Holdings, its real estate division that was renamed Capmark, to Goldman Sachs, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, and Five Mile Capital Partners. GMAC Real Estate was sold to Brookfield Asset Management. In 2009, Capmark filed for bankruptcy and its North American loan origination and servicing business was acquired by Berkadia, a joint venture of Leucadia National and Berkshire Hathaway.
On December 24, 2008, the Federal Reserve accepted the company's application to become a bank holding company. In January 2009, the company shut down Nuvell Financial Services, its subprime lending division.
As a result of losses in GMAC ResCap, the United States Department of the Treasury invested $17.2 billion in the company in 2008–2009. The Treasury sold its last stake in the company in 2014, recovering $19.6 billion from its $17.2 billion investment.
In May 2010, GMAC re-branded itself as Ally Financial.
| Date | Document Name & Details | Documents |
|---|---|---|
| 25 February 2010 hearing date | GMAC Financial Services and the Troubled Asset Relief Program Hearing Congressional Oversight Panel |  PDF - 2.3MB - 104 pages |
| Date | Article | Author/Source |
|---|---|---|
| 3 January 2007 | Auto Insurance Tune-up: Top Mistakes People Make When Buying Auto Insurance | The GMAC Insurance Group |