DealZone

We (the taxpayers)  paid some of the $50 billion to bail General Motors out of its bankruptcy misery last year.  Now, the former American industrial icon is going to launch one of the biggest U.S. IPOs  of the decade.

According to estimates by Independent International Investment Research, GM’s initial offering would raise $12 billion, higher than any U.S. IPO this year and exceeding all over the last ten years, except for Visa’s offering in 2008 and AT&T Wireless in 2000.

The Wall Street Journal said this morning that GM is close to picking JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley as lead underwriters for the IPO. The U.S. Treasury, which owns  a 61-percent stake in GM, said on Thursday that the timing would be decided by GM, based on market conditions.

Creating an appetite for a company that lost more than $80 billion in four years and has more than $14 billion debt, is not going to be an easy sell.  Still,  with GM swinging back to profitability and auto sales showing a rebound,  the former backbone of industrial America coud just be the next Great American IPO.

Italy’s Ferrero has ruled out a rival bid for Cadbury Plc, clearing the way for Kraft Foods to complete its 11.7 billion-pound ($18.9 billion) proposed takeover of the British confectioner. Fellow chocolate maker Hershey has already said it has no intention of bidding for Cadbury, so with Nestle already ruled out, Kraft appears on course to complete its recommended bid by the deadline of February 2.

US investment group Blackstone is examining the possibility of entering the UK banking market, its chief executive Stephen Schwarzman said on the sideleines of a conference in Saudi Arabia, confirming earlier reports by Reuters and other media. He said that opening a bank in the UK would not represent a major change in strategy for Blackstone.

And from other media:

CPA Global, the patent and legal services group, is set to complete on Thursday a management buyout financed by Intermediate Capital Group, the Financial Times reported.

Major automakers don’t sell cars to American consumers; they sell to dealers. And the biggest U.S. dealership chain by a wide margin is Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based AutoNation, which sold over 440,000 new and used vehicles last year.

So when AutoNation CEO Mike Jackson talks, auto executives listen — or so you would think.

In an interview with Reuters, Jackson said Detroit automakers had largely ignored his warnings over the past decade that the U.S. industry was headed for a crisis.