CIT spent $60,000 on federal lobbying

By Steve Eder

NEW YORK (Reuters) - CIT Group Inc spent about $60,000 in the second-quarter to lobby the U.S. government, according to lobbying disclosure reports.

On Monday, CIT Group secured a $3 billion loan facility from its bondholders and said it planned a comprehensive restructuring of its liabilities.

Between April 1 and June 30, CIT Group lobbied Congress, the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the U.S. Treasury, and the U.S. Federal Reserve, on issues related to the Temporary Liquidity Guaranty Program and the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, both measures by the federal government to bailout banks.

Lobbying disclosures show that CIT Group wasn't active in lobbying until last September, when amid the collapse of the financial sector, it hired McDermott Will & Emery LLP, a Washington firm, to represent it in Washington.

CIT spent about $90,000 last year on lobbying expenses, and about $60,000 in the first quarter of 2009, according to the filings.

Those numbers marked an expansion of CIT's lobbying efforts, but still paled in comparison with many of its banking counterparts, who often spend hundreds of thousands of dollars each quarter on lobbying.

(Reporting by Steve Eder; Editing by Derek Caney)