DETROIT – Among the banks helping General Motors with its initial public stock offering this week are two identified by initials only: ICBC and CICC.

Americans uneasy about U.S. government ownership of General Motors may want to hear more: One of those banks is the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, one of China’s four big central government banks. The other, China International Capital Corp., is a joint venture run primarily by Central Huijin Investment Ltd., an arm of the state, and Morgan Stanley.

This is the first time Chinese government banks have participated in a major U.S.-issued IPO, according to IPO tracking firm Dealogic. The banks will sell a portion of the new shares.

Chinese automaker SAIC, GM’s partner in China, is finalizing plans to buy a roughly 1 percent stake, worth about $500 million, in GM’s IPO, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday. SAIC is owned by the Shanghai city government.

There could be political backlash for President Obama, who has spent the past week in Asia addressing economic issues, like currency exchange differences between the U.S. and China. Obama has argued that China artificially deflates its currency, the yuan, in an attempt to make its exports cheaper.

GM’s Nov. 18 stock offering will reduce the U.S. Treasury’s stake in the company from 61 percent to 43 percent, and will help pay back the more than $50 billion that taxpayers invested in GM to keep it from collapsing.

 

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