Treasury Auctions for Airline Warrants Generate $556 Million to Taxpayers

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of the Treasury (Treasury) today announced that taxpayers received $556,685,001 from a series of auctions held from June 3 to 13, 2024, to sell its warrants for common stock of 11 publicly traded airlines. The airlines issued these warrants to Treasury in 2020 and 2021 as partial compensation for financial assistance and loans that Treasury provided to the airlines under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, and the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.

Treasury auctioned these warrants as part of its continuing post-pandemic efforts to recover value for taxpayers in an orderly, fair, and transparent manner. The assistance Treasury provided under these programs protected hundreds of thousands of jobs and helped maintain critical infrastructure capacity during the pandemic.    

The warrants sold in the auctions have not been, and will not be, registered under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the Act), and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to, or for the benefit of, U.S. persons absent registration under, or an applicable exemption from, the registration requirements of the Act and applicable state securities laws. The warrants were offered only to (1) “qualified institutional buyers” as defined in Rule 144A under the Act, (2) certain institutional “accredited investors” as defined in Rule 501(a) under the Act, and (3) the issuers of the relevant warrants. Neither this press release nor the information regarding the auctions on Treasury’s website constitutes an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy the warrants or any other securities (including the underlying shares of common stock).

###