Biggest Corporate Bailouts

The Treasury Department’s bailout of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac thas an estimated price tag of that could be as high as $200 billion, expected to be the biggest such takeover in history. BusinessWeek assembled a list of some of the biggest corporate and national bailouts in history, going back to J. P. Morgan (right). Here’s the list, from most recent to oldest:

AIG, Sept. 17, 2008: $85 billion guaranteed by the Federal Reserve.

Bear Stearns, Mar. 16, 2008: $29 billion guaranteed by the Federal Reserve

MBIA, Dec. 10, 2007: $1 billion from private equity fund Warburg Pincus

UBS, Dec. 10, 2007: $11.5 billion from Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, along with an unnamed Middle Eastern investor

E*Trade Financial, Nov. 29, 2007: $2.55 billion from Citadel Investment Group

Citigroup, Nov. 26, 2007: $7.5 billion from Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund

Countrywide Financial, Aug. 22, 2007: $2 billion from Bank of America

Goldman Sachs Hedge Fund, Aug. 13, 2007: $3 billion from Goldman Sachs and investors including C.V. Starr & Co. and Eli Broad

U.S. Domestic Airlines, September 2001: $15 billion from the U.S. government

Russia, 1998: $17 billion in loans from the International Monetary Fund

Long Term Capital Management, 1998: $3.6 billion from various Wall Street firms

Apple, August 1997: $150 million from rival Microsoft

Mexico, 1995: $50 billion in loans ($20 billion from the U.S. and more than $30 billion from the International Monetary Fund, Europe, private banks, and other trading partners)

Salomon Brothers, 1987: $700 million from Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway

Various U.S. Savings and Loans, 1986-1995: $124 billion from the FDIC

Continental Illinois, 1984: $1 billion in capital from the FDIC, which also guaranteed the bank’s $30 billion in uninsured deposits and assumed $3.5 billion of the company’s debt

Chrysler, January 1980: $1.5 billion in loans from the U.S. government

City of New York, 1975: $150 million from the New York City Teachers’ Union plus refinancing $3 billion of its debt

Lockheed Aircraft, 1971: $250 million in loan guarantees from Congress

New York City Trusts, 1907: $50 million ($30 million from John Pierpont Morgan, along with other bankers and $25 million from the U.S. Treasury)

For more details on each bailout, see Business Week’s “Corporate Bailouts Through History” slideshow.

Related lists:

• Top Corporate Bankruptcies
• Biggest U.S. Bank Failures
• Cities With Least Personal Debt
• Cities With Most Personal Debt