Company News: Kerkorian unloads 14 million GM shares

Dissident General Motors Corp. shareholder Kirk Kerkorian is selling another 14 million shares in the troubled automaker, dropping his stake by a third to 4.95 percent for a price of just over $400 million.

The billionaire’s move disclosed Thursday represents an even larger retreat from his ownership of the world’s biggest automaker than previous indications.

The investor’s stock sale was disclosed even as GM announced it has completed a deal announced in April to sell a 51 percent stake in its finance unit to private investors for about $14 billion.

That was part of the automaker’s plan to gain some financial flexibility as it struggles to compete with Asian automakers who have been eroding its market share at home. GM has lost more than $3 billion in the first nine months of the year, and is slashing its U.S. work force in an effort to cuts costs.

Kerkorian’s investment company, Tracinda Corp., had said last week it was reducing its stake to 42 million shares, or 7.4 percent of GM, from 56 million shares, or 9.9 percent.

In a filing Thursday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Tracinda said it had reached agreement on Tuesday to sell another 14 million shares at $28.75 each, leaving him with 28 million shares of the automaker. That sale would raise a total of $402.5 million and will close on Friday.

“A U.S. Bankruptcy Judge on Thursday urged Comair and its pilots to return to negotiations and find a consensual pay-cutting deal, as he mulled a company request to throw out the pilots’ labor contract.

Judge Adlai Hardin made his comments after four days of sometimes emotional testimony surrounding the request by the Delta Air Lines Inc. subsidiary to impose $15.8 million in concessions on roughly 1,500 pilots. During Thursday’s testimony, one pilot said his family had to move in with his wife’s parents because of financial pressures, while a pilot union leader said his group is “dead serious” about a possible strike.

“Rite Aid Corp. on Thursday scheduled a stockholders meeting for Jan. 18 to vote on its $2.55 billion purchase of Eckerd and Brooks stores.

The nation’s third-largest drugstore chain said it still hopes the transaction will be completed in the company’s fourth quarter, which ends March 3. The shareholders meeting will be in Harrisburg.

A federal antitrust review is ongoing, and analysts noted that some of the 1,858 drugstores in the deal are in areas in which Rite Aid already has a heavy presence.