By Justin Berkowitz

It would seem that at the “New” GM, nobody has gotten the memo about corporations going on autopilot the second two weeks of December. General Motors has made two major announcements in the past 48 hours, and both will have repercussions well beyond 2012.

GM’s $5.5-Billion Payment to Treasury Takes Government Stake Down to 19 Percent

How’s this for holiday shopping? For $5.5 billion, General Motors will buy (and then resell to private investors) 200 million of its shares currently in the hands of the U.S. government. When the transaction goes through, it’ll leave Uncle Sam holding just 19 percent of GM, from today’s 26-percent stake. Along with the news, the U.S. Treasury—which handles the government’s money here—said it would be selling off its remaining 300 million shares some time in the next 15 months.

By that point, roughly five years will have passed since the U.S. Treasury first began the GM bailout, which ultimately saw the government pump $49.5 billion into the company. The 61-percent ownership stake that the government took in 2009 dropped to 26 percent in 2010 when General Motors held an IPO and returned to the stock market.

There are two key insights here. First, GM is paying the government more for its shares than they are worth in public trading. That’s good for the taxpayer, but it means General Motors is intentionally taking a financial hit of about $400 million in order to reduce the government’s ownership of the company. Second, even though GM is overpaying for this particular deal, the back-of-the-napkin math will show the American taxpayer losing at least $10 billion on the deal. That’s just the difference between what the Treasury gave to GM and what it’s getting back directly, though, and doesn’t take into account any economic value of GM staying in business after 2008–2009.

Peugeot and GM Won’t Co-Develop Mid-Size-Car Platform Anymore

General Motors and PSA Peugeot Citroën are hashing out details of the general collaboration they agreed upon in October. Since that news, the two have ditched plans to develop a D-segment platform together, which would have underpinned future mid-size sedans like the Chevy Malibu and the Buick Regal. The Eurozone crisis has created a biblical-level armageddon for Peugeot, Renault, and Fiat, with all three seeing dismal sales in their core market of Western Europe. Citroën just confirmed that it’s going to put the gorgeous but salesproof C6 out to pasture, a symbol of the impossibility of selling large French sedans. PSA management probably sees no justification for investing in a new D-segment platform at this point.

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The latest iteration of the GM–PSA deal still will see them co-develop two MPVs—multipurpose vehicles, or mini-minivans like the Ford C-Max—for Europe, as well as a platform for future B-segment models about the size of the Chevy Sonic. Peugeot and GM also will work jointly on a family of small four-cylinder engines, which will be loosely based on current Peugeot engine architecture.

Try not to lose much sleep about the cancelation of the D-segment project. GM has far more expertise in designing that size of vehicle than Peugeot does, and it’s not as though the deal would have included styling work to bring Chevrolet designs back to the eponymous founder’s French roots.

Source: Car & Driver