Treasury receives $9.45 million for TCF warrants

The Treasury Department has received $9.45 million in the sale of warrants it had received from TCF Financial Corp. as part of the support the government provided the bank during last year's financial crisis.

The Treasury said that it sold 3.2 million warrants at a price of $3 per warrant. Warrants are financial instruments that allow the holder to buy stock in the future at a fixed price.

It was the third auction of warrants from financial institutions that had received support from the government's $700 billion financial bailout fund, which was created by Congress in October 2008 at the height of the financial crisis.

TCF, based in Wayzata, Minn., received $361 million in government assistance in November 2008 and paid that money back in April.

Banks have been rushing to pay back the support they received from the government and cut their ties to the bailout fund, known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, in part to escape restrictions on executive compensation.

Many banks that received aid from the TARP repurchased their own warrants when they returned the government assistance because they did not want to dilute the value of their stockholders' shares.

But in the case of TCF and two other big banks, the government scheduled the auction sales when it could not agree on a price for the warrants it hold from those three institutions. The Obama administration has wanted to avoid criticism that it was accepting prices for the warrants that were too low given the criticism it has already received for the TARP program.

Opponents have attacked the TARP as a bailout for big banks which allowed them to pay huge bonuses to their top executives while doing little to boost bank lending to struggling small businesses.

In the two previous auctions, the government received $146.5 million for the sale of warrants from Capital One Financial Corp. of McLean, Va., and $936.1 million for warrants sold from New York-based JPMorgan Chase & Co.