Treasury to launch 3 more toxic asset funds
AllianceBernstein, BlackRock and Wellington Capital Management have raised enough funds to begin buying toxic assets.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The U.S. Treasury Department will announce Monday that three more funds have met requirements to get government financing that will let them begin purchases of banks' so-called toxic assets.
Treasury said last Wednesday, which was Sept. 30, that Invesco Ltd and Trust Company of the West, or TCW , were the first of nine public-private investment funds to raise the necessary capital to launch the program for buying toxic assets.
Three more -- AllianceBernstein LP and its sub-advisors Greenfield Partners LLC and Rialto Capital Management LLC; BlackRock Inc and Wellington Capital Management -- each will be named on Monday as also having raised enough capital to participate in the program.
The Public-Private Investment Program, known as the PPIP, has been scaled back as banks have shown they can raise capital in the private sector without first unloading troubled assets, many of which are tied to bad mortgages.
When the plan was announced in March, Treasury hoped the funds could take up to $1 trillion of toxic assets from banks' balance sheets. But that target is now around $40 billion, made up of private and public investment plus debt financing.
Treasury provides debt financing for up to 100% of the total capital commitments of funds in the program, representing about $12.25 billion of total debt and equity commitments from the first five funds now participating in the program.
Treasury initially approved nine funds to participate in the PPIP; it expects the remaining four of them to complete closings by the end of October. It said then that funds would have until Oct. 8, which is this Thursday, to raise their required initial capital amounts.
Treasury now says timing of the closures depends partly on how funds raise the required $500 million of capital they need in order to get matching government funds, with some taking longer to complete public offerings targeted to public investors. 
