GM files for initial public offering

General Motors filed paperwork on Wednesday to make an initial public offering of stock.

GM made the long-awaited filing shortly before markets closed Wednesday afternoon, setting up the process through which the government will begin to unwind its stake in the automaker.

GM made the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission to allow it to begin trading stock on the New York Stock Exchange and to allow the government to sell off its approximately 61 percent equity stake in the company. The SEC filing does not specify how many shares will be sold or the expected price range for them. 

The company is reportedly planning to offer preferred shares, a mechanism to allow the government to extract itself from the company more quickly.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, has pressured the Obama administration to work to ensure taxpayers can recover most, if not all, of the $49.5 billion investment it made in the company last year during its government-supervised bankruptcy.

Treasury officials have emphasized that the government is not exercising undue pressure on the company to hasten its IPO or other business practices, and they have said the government is exercising its rights as a shareholder of the company without interfering with the company's operations.