The U.S. Treasury Department announced on Tuesday that two more large investment companies have fulfilled the necessary requirements and are ready to join the federal government’s toxic assets purchase program.  The federal government initiated buying toxic assets from banks with the intention of helping them resume normal lending, which will fuel economic recovery.  The two investment companies, which together raised more than the $500 million needed to close investment funds, were New York-based Angelo, Gordon & Co. LP and Norwalk, Conn.-based GE Capital Real Estate. These companies will jointly invest in the Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP), under which the Treasury provides financial support for private firms that buy distressed assets, including mortgage-related loans.  These two companies take the total number of firms to have joined the government in buying toxic assets to six. The private sector capital raised by these six firms totaled $3.58 billion. With ...

Treasury finally "unveiled" details of the much-anticipated, much-delayed and now scaled-down version of its toxic or "legacy" assets purchase program, which was announced earlier as a part of the Financial Stability Plan in February. The Public-Private Investment Program, or PPIP, will leverage private capital with government subsidies, so that the chosen investment firms can buy up the legacy assets, which have been clogging the balance sheets of the banks, making them reluctant to lend. The Treasury selected nine financial firms as partners for the program, including BlackRock Inc (BLK), Invesco Ltd (IVZ) and GE Capital Real Estate, a subsidiary of GE (GE). PIMCO (PKO), which was widely expected to be on the list, announced that it had withdrawn from the program due to related uncertainties. The nine firms chosen have been given up to three months to raise an initial $500 million ...