Eagles stadium sponsor repays US nearly $1 billion, with interest

Radnor-based Lincoln National Corp., best known locally as the naming-rights sponsor of the Eagles football stadium in South Philadelphia, says it's bought back all $950 million worth of preferred stock that the U.S. Treasury purchased to help the company during the late financial crisis under the Bush administration's TARP program (which President Obama prefers to call the Capital Purchase Program, or CPP).

The money, plus interest, "was an important bridge program to help stabilize the U.S. financial markets," Lincoln chief executive Dennis R. Glass said in a statement. "We always viewed CPP as a temporary cushion," to be repaid "as soon as market conditions warranted," and sooner than expected: Lincoln had earlier talked about paying the money back next year.

As I noted in a column last December, Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky questioned the government's decision to invest billions in scarce taxpayer dollars in Lincoln and rival Hartford Financial to build up a business - selling insurance - that had "little to do with lending to consumers and businesses," TARP's supposed purchase.

Defenders of the investment noted the companies had spent many millions protecting their investors when stock prices plunged in late 2008. Hartford has already repaid TARP, leaving American International Group as the lone insurer that still owes the government.