GM's IPO likely to be world's biggest stock sale

General Motors Co may enhance its initial public offer (IPO) by 31 per cent to 478 million shares after the US Treasury offered to offload 106 million more shares than initially planned and the United Auto Workers' retiree health-care trust offered to sell 7 million shares more, say reports.

This will increase the IPO size to $18.2 billion, making it the second largest in US history after Visa Inc's $19.7 billion sale in March 2008. GM had on Monday increased its offer range to $32 to $33 a share, from $26 to $29 fixed earlier.

GM also plans to sell up to $4.6 billion of preferred stock, up from $3 billion previously announced. With this, GM's total issue size would go up to $22.2 billion, which may become the biggest-ever stock sale, say analysts.

The biggest till now is the IPO of Agricultural Bank of China Ltd of Beijing, which collected $22.1 billion in share sales in Shanghai and Hong Kong last quarter.

The IPO will be priced today after the US stock markets close, and the shares will start trading from tomorrow.

According to reports, GM's underwriters have stopped taking orders for the IPO, which was more than seven times subscribed. The company had received a taxpayer bailout last year amounting to $49.5 billion.