Ford expects loss of invertors to GM wil be muted

Ford Motor Co.’s loss of institutional investors to General Motors Co. after its planned initial public offering will be “muted,” Ford Treasurer Neil Schloss said today in an interview.

“I’m not overly worried about what GM’s IPO does,” Schloss said when asked how the stock sale will affect Ford’s shares. “I think it’s muted. We have to continue with our results, and if we do, our investors will stay with us.”

Executive Chairman Bill Ford said in August that some investors may reduce their holdings in the second-largest U.S. automaker to buy shares in GM’s IPO and spread their risk across the automotive industry. GM, 61 percent owned by the U.S. Treasury, filed in August for a share sale that would cut the government’s stake and mark the Detroit-based company’s return to public markets after filing for bankruptcy last year.

“We don’t sense that anybody is full-exposure in autos, so to the extent that they like GM and like Ford there’s no reason why they can’t hold them both,” Schloss, 51, said in the interview at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York.

Schloss, who joined Ford in 1982, said investors will make relative-value trades of Ford depending on where GM prices its IPO. GM probably will seek to raise $8 billion to $10 billion in November, a smaller sale than the automaker originally targeted, two people familiar with the matter said last week.

“I’m sure a lot of guys are underweight autos, but the GM IPO still might hurt them,” said Joe Phillippi, principal of AutoTrends Inc., a consulting firm in Short Hills, New Jersey. Some investors “will have to either stay with their Ford bet or hedge their bet by selling some Ford and buying GM.”

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