Eric Feldstein - Creative Finance - Forbes

You know the General Motors finance guys are getting imaginative when the automaker establishes its own bank to scare up cash. Now, with the blessing of federal regulators, GM can get financing via its own bank subsidiary at half the cost of what it would pay investors to take bonds off its hands. GMAC Automotive Bank, an industrial loan corporation set up in Utah in June 2004, is not unique–Toyota and other competitors have banklike subsidiaries in Nevada and elsewhere. (GMAC operates three other limited-purpose banks, serving its unrelated mortgage business.) Toyota doesn’t need the money; GM does. GM’s bonds are rated one notch above junk by Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s, and the unsecured debt of its financing arm, General Motors Acceptance Corp., is scarcely better. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2005/0509/046.htmlRead less